Scared and embarrassed but I don't care anymore

Stumbling on this site, my god, it is like an enormous weight has been lifted off my chest. So many years of feeling as if I was crazy, if I had imagined the entire thing, and now, so much relief.

I don’t know to this day what it was exactly I saw that night camping in LBL (Land Between the Lakes, in Western KY) and I don’t even know if it applies to anything here on this site. I just know I have found a place where I can perhaps share my experience of that weekend.

I’m sorry to be using a throwaway but several friends know my main account and I’ve known that sidelong glance, can recognize it a mile away, when you open up to certain people about something that you know happened but you cannot explain. It might be cowardice but I can’t bear to have one of them give me that look of “are you ok?” instead of “I can’t understand what you experienced but I’m here for you.” It’s the main reason I no longer talk about it.

Anyway, this happened a bit over 2 decades ago, as I said at LBL. My dad hunted, mainly bowhunting, there regularly and while I never was a hunter, I loved camping in the woods. We never used any formal campsite back then, we’d drive along the Trace, turn off onto one of the numerous side roads, and then, near a creek bed (usually dry or just a small trickle from a spring, unless it had rained), we had our usual campsite. We pulled the car off the road, set up the tent, tarp it all over angled, and Dad would do his thing while I would do mine.

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Typically, if I went with him, that meant (and this time as well), he’d trek off to his stand and would be gone most of the day. While he was off, I’d hike a bit (LBL, while big, is not a place one could easily get lost in if you have basic survival skills), read, or just relax. For me, it was a place to go to get away from it all, get lost in nature or in a good sci-fi book.

This time, this early morning, he had left after a quick breakfast, a chill and dampness in the air, the smell of fall coming in. Any of the outdoor types will understand that smell of wet leaves during fall. I mention this only as it will be relevant later.

Anyway, dad had left and I whittled some on the hickory “staff” I had made, before heading out for a very early morning hike. I set off in the usual direction, opposite from the road we were nearby, mostly following near the creek but not along it directly. I had a compass if I needed but I never did. I had grown up in the Jackson Purchase and it was home. I loved nature and never felt uncomfortable out in the woods.

Before long, however, cresting a small hill I heard rustling among the trees, while the leaves were starting to fall, most were still up, fall at its prettiest. I slowed only for a moment, I’m used to those sounds, squirrels typically, bounding from tree to tree. But then, it got louder, heavy, unlike any sound I’ve heard trees make outside of them breaking under ice or age. It was hard to focus on the sound, like it was coming from all around me, but not, and every direction I turned, I saw trees in the distance shaking, as if something large just jumped from them, but saw nothing else. Then, I was probably 15, and despite years of being in the woods for many of them, I felt something I never really had before. Fear. Not terror, that would come later, but actual fear. Almost as soon as it hard started, the rattling, violent shaking of trees focused, not in a ring around me, to one before me. Opposite of the direction of camp, and then, nothing. No sound at all. Not quiet but an absence almost. Somehow that relaxed me. I had been exposed that that stillness before and while the violent rustling of multiple trees felt alien, this was familiar. I thought about going back, until I saw in the distance, near the last tree that shook, a slim dark figure. I couldn’t make her out (somehow I felt it was a her), but she was up near the ridge ahead and I felt compelled to head to her and I did.

I know that sounds crazy, and typing it down now, I still do, but then, I rationalized it as “I wonder if she heard all that too”? Perhaps she saw what it was. But as I walked towards her, she slid away, staying just barely visible among the trees. The sky was just starting to really lighten up, that transition from dawn to morning. And slid was the right word I feel. She moved what appeared to be normally, but the distance she seemed to cover was unnatural. I’m tall at over 6 feet tall but my strides covered half the distance hers did and she seemed normal sized, as normal sized as a dark featureless shape could be. I mean I could see a head, arms, legs, what appeared to be dark but normal clothing but I couldn’t track her. Focusing on her was hard and outside of knowing it was a her, I could tell nothing else as she disappeared and reappeared among the trees, a couple hundred yards ahead of me, walking slowly yet somehow covering distances at running speeds.

Again, I don’t know why I followed her, but I did, down a hill, through some fog, until I neared a clearing. I lost sight of her as I neared it and things got darker, like when the sun crawls behind a dense cloud except there were none that I could see, though the sun was still too low for me to catch. The stillness, familiar, was there, but that didn’t bother me. It was the smell that did. Every step closer to the clearing, I noticed it more and more, and though I couldn’t find her, and I desperately wanted to find her, sent alarm bells through me.

I’ve been both before and since, in the woods hundreds of times. One thing I have never experienced since that weekend, was the complete absence of smell. Nature has a smell, not a stink, but one that is distinct. One of decay and life, of plants and trees and creeks and stagnant ponds. And while, depending on where you are at, you may or may not smell the same smells, there always is in.

Except, there, there was nothing. That lack slowed me, stopped me, and only then did I see her, across the clearing, looking at me. I wish I could say she was giant and hairy, or alien gray. She looked normal. Indistinct and unmemorable, except for her smile. When she smiled, I ran. I had been scared before, with the trees, out in the middle of LBL. But that, the lack of any smell, sound, and that smile, it terrified me and I ran. I was crying and terrified and I had no idea why I should be. I stopped about halfway back and everything was brighter and despite my terror, I still wanted to turn back. I did look back and though she was just a shape again, she was there, closer, freezing as I spotted her. A smile again, but one I felt and did not see and I ran, all the way back to the tent. I got in it and cried, shaking in a terror I did not and could not understand.

I stayed in the tent until my dad got back and I didn’t tell him about it. By then the terror had faded and while I couldn’t explain it, I knew something horrible would have happened had I gone into the dark clearing that had no smells or sound.

By night, I had almost convinced myself I had half imagined it all, when, stepping away from the tent to pee, that stillness came over and I froze. I looked among the trees but saw nothing until I saw 2 reddish lights, moving in the distance. I knew the terrain and knew it had to be uphill from me, but the “eyes” were descending. I felt “her” in the sense I had felt it was a woman earlier, coming my way and I felt a smile that was not a smile even though I could not see it. I ran back to the tent and my dad was there, staring into the fire and when I yelled at him, he just sat there, not responding. I shook him, feeling those eyes, that “her” behind and then, even the fire had no smell to it. It was just nothing. I shook my dad harder, screaming at him, and then suddenly, the fire was crackling, I could smell the smoke, and the stillness was gone. My dad asked me what the hell I was yelling about and when I told him, he gave me that look I mentioned, that sideways glance that said, “Are you OK?”

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After much pressuring, we left and while I barely held it together, as soon as I got in my room at our house, I cried. Not because I had embarrassed myself, but because of relief. I knew for a fact, had I not reached my dad, had not shook him, that I would have “wandered off” in the dark. Just like I would have wandered off in the morning, following “her”. She wanted me in that clearing, which felt wrong, smelled of nothing, and I wonder and have wondered so many nights what would have happened. I probably and hopefully will never have an answer, I just pray I never see or feel her again.

I’ve been in the woods since then, both near there and other woods and never have I felt that way again. But still, every time the woods get quiet, I get scared. I don’t know if any of this applies to this here, but I hope some of you might understand and thank you for letting me post here and get this off my chest. It’s followed me for over two decades and I don’t know how the fuck you can feel a smile, but that was the most terrifying experience in my life and I had to get it out. Thank you.

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