Wierd things you have seen in the woods.

Best thread in recent memory. Thanks opie. More stories please ...

The strangest thing I've ever seen in the woods, I saw not too far from where I'm sitting right now in East Texas on our land... a Hyena.

No kidding.

I know this land... we've got 400 acres here, & I've seen coyotes, bobcats, deer, even a very out-of-place (these days) Red Wolf once... all kinds of things over the years, but obviously, this was a first.

I was a kid, and had hunted & played here since I could walk... we knew & know it very well, as it's been in my Family for 80+ years.

So, nothing surprised us... it's our place, after all.

And then one day, while hunting with my Dad & little brother, there about 75 yds in front of us, in about 1" tall grass and facing us, was a friggin' Hyena.

Classic build... long front legs, shorter back legs, a 'mane', big round ears... head at first lowered & then up on a long thick neck as it noticed us and turned to run in the opposite direction and disappeared.

No-one took a shot at it, and we never saw it again.

Where it came from is still unknown... we later found out that miles away, a man that kept various exotic animals had been ordered by the State to have them relocated to a proper place... a zoo, sanctuary... whatever.

Keeping exotics is not unheard-of in this area... my next-door-neighbor (1/2 mile down the road) currently has 2 black bear, wallabies... and various other non-natives.

But instead relocating them, the aforementioned man in a fit of *screw you guys!* released them all... I do know that for years there were tons of sightings of a chicken-killing black panther.

But to my knowledge, we're the only ones that ever saw a Hyena in the East Texas woods.

Scrump, HI! I live in Allen Texas and I saw 2 hyena's also, they were laying in a field about 50 ft off of the main street. Two of my friends had a pair of them run in front of them while they were on a biking trail in the woods. Also in Allen. I believe you! :)

Went hiking into the woods one night because I had a dream the night before with some whispering voices telling me I needed to explore these woods. I had never really taken dreams seriously, much less followed instructions received in one, but there was some overwhelming force pulling me to those woods.

So the next day I began hiking into the woods, at around 12:30 at night. About 30-40 minutes into my hike, I started hearing distant machinery. It was unlike anything I've ever heard. It wasn't logging equipment, like chainsaws and hydraulic splitters, it wasn't your typical 3-phase electrical motors powering mills and lathes like you'd hear in a factory, the best way I can describe it is it sounded like a living, breathing, moaning and groaning giant machine that was ripping apart some type of animals that were screaming sounds that I still can't drink out of my mind to this day. I kept traveling towards the sound, but seeing absolutely zero light anywhere in the distance, nor behind me at this point.

I continued for another 10 minutes, moving cautiously to the terrifying noises, questioning my logic a couple times and turning to head back home, but then changing my mind and deciding to continue on to satisfy my curiosity which had never been stimulated to this degree. Then it happened. Silence. What must have been 120db of maddening horror went from a a screeching roar to complete silence. I've never been more scared in my life, I thought for sure I had lost my mind, and it was just absolutely terrifying. I heard footsteps and whispers, many many whispers. The footsteps were getting closer, breaking all kinds of branches and twigs on the ground. And it was growing vast, it wasn't a singular point of sound, it was literally surrounding me 360 degrees.

I'm not ashamed to admit that at this point I was laying on the ground in the fetal position, saying prayers and trying to block out this madness and wake up from this nightmare. But it wasn't a nightmare and the whispering was now discernable for the first time. They were saying "light" over and over. Just then, I remembered that I had packed a lantern in my backpack so I quickly dug it out, and felt my camera in there too. I was thinking that in case my lantern didn't work, I could use the flash on my camera as a light. I discovered I had forgotten any matches, so the lantern was a no-go. What happened next cannot be described, I feel as though it would break and damn my soul if I tried. So I will just post the picture that I snapped there in the woods that instant, and let you decide what it is you're looking at.

Here's the pic...
[link to img842.imageshack.us]

Scrump, HI! I live in Allen Texas and I saw 2 hyena's also, they were laying in a field about 50 ft off of the main street. Two of my friends had a pair of them run in front of them while they were on a biking trail in the woods. Also in Allen. I believe you! :)

We were all around the fire around seven of us on a clear night. I alone looked up at just the right time to see an ENORMOUS shrouded, winged creature fly over us, silently. It was right over the tree-line and because of the fire I could tell that it was no beastly owl or anything. Besides I've never seen a bird this big in all my life in these parts. This was a creature. None of the others saw it, and I kept my silence, though kept looking up hoping it would take another pass.

Went hiking into the woods one night because I had a dream the night before with some whispering voices telling me I needed to explore these woods. I had never really taken dreams seriously, much less followed instructions received in one, but there was some overwhelming force pulling me to those woods.

So the next day I began hiking into the woods, at around 12:30 at night. About 30-40 minutes into my hike, I started hearing distant machinery. It was unlike anything I've ever heard. It wasn't logging equipment, like chainsaws and hydraulic splitters, it wasn't your typical 3-phase electrical motors powering mills and lathes like you'd hear in a factory, the best way I can describe it is it sounded like a living, breathing, moaning and groaning giant machine that was ripping apart some type of animals that were screaming sounds that I still can't drink out of my mind to this day. I kept traveling towards the sound, but seeing absolutely zero light anywhere in the distance, nor behind me at this point.

I continued for another 10 minutes, moving cautiously to the terrifying noises, questioning my logic a couple times and turning to head back home, but then changing my mind and deciding to continue on to satisfy my curiosity which had never been stimulated to this degree. Then it happened. Silence. What must have been 120db of maddening horror went from a a screeching roar to complete silence. I've never been more scared in my life, I thought for sure I had lost my mind, and it was just absolutely terrifying. I heard footsteps and whispers, many many whispers. The footsteps were getting closer, breaking all kinds of branches and twigs on the ground. And it was growing vast, it wasn't a singular point of sound, it was literally surrounding me 360 degrees.

I'm not ashamed to admit that at this point I was laying on the ground in the fetal position, saying prayers and trying to block out this madness and wake up from this nightmare. But it wasn't a nightmare and the whispering was now discernable for the first time. They were saying "light" over and over. Just then, I remembered that I had packed a lantern in my backpack so I quickly dug it out, and felt my camera in there too. I was thinking that in case my lantern didn't work, I could use the flash on my camera as a light. I discovered I had forgotten any matches, so the lantern was a no-go. What happened next cannot be described, I feel as though it would break and damn my soul if I tried. So I will just post the picture that I snapped there in the woods that instant, and let you decide what it is you're looking at.

Here's the pic...
[link to img842.imageshack.us]

Must of been 15 years ago or so my girlfiend and I drove way out into a wooded area in rural southwest Va. We parked at an overllook on the Blue Ridge parkway to make out. As we were moving around to find a more comfortable position she screams and says there's someone staring into the window. I turned around and saw nothing. I could see she was really frightened and I got out and walked around and found nobody. Later in the morning we saw " I watched you " written on the back window of the car.

My 3rd weird forest story:

I was in high school with 2 other friends. We drove to the mall at about midnight because we heard the rumor that the Luby's restaurant in the mall stayed open later than the rest of the mall, and we had the plan to somehow sneak into the mall and run around at night.

Well we got to the mall and Luby's was already closed, so we started driving back home. On the way back there was a stretch of the highway that was slightly elevated with a lot of forest on either side. Driving past this part we all noticed a bright orange glow reflecting off these low hanging clouds to our left. This glow was coming from inside the forest.

We all thought it was a forest fire and we were looking for an adventure that night, so we decided to drive into the nearest neighborhood and see if we could somehow get closer to this fire.

Driving around in the neighborhood, we could not find a road that headed in that direction of the woods. So eventually we ended up parking our car and just walking into the woods. We had no flashlights or anything, but the orange glow off the clouds was illuminating the surrounding area somewhat. We basically just walked blindly in the direction of the source of the glow. At this point it was probably about thirty minutes after midnight.

After walking through the woods for awhile, we came across a makeshift road in the forest. It was composed of planks of wood lying one after the other. This road appeared to lead directly to the source of this glow. So we walked along the side of this road, in the direction of the glow.

Ahead of us the road curved and ended at this glow, it was enormously bright and there was a strange metallic grinding or roaring noise. We started to get nervous so we took cover in the woods and approached the destination through the woods, so that if anyone was there they wouldn't immediately see us. We came up to a clearing, my friends crouched down and I climbed a tree so I had the best vantage point.

What we were looking at was basically a clearing, at least a football field in diameter, with a gigantic crater in the center. It looked like a classic moon crater, raised on the edges. There was a HUGE flame coming out of this crater, this flame must have been over a hundred feet across and the flames were as high or higher than the surrounding trees. Standing around this crater were approximately 15-20 men in yellow hazmat suits. In the center of this flame I could barely make out a rectangular black object maybe about the size of a refrigerator. In the background of the clearing, behind this flame, were several large trailer houses.

Occasionally a load metallic grinding or roaring would be heard from the crater, and the flames would leap even higher into the air. I climbed down the tree so I could tell my friends what I had seen. We contemplated just walking out there and asking these men what was going on, but we were young and scared that maybe these people would kill us because we saw something we weren't supposed to see.

Eventually we left, and we spent the whole night theorizing about what was going on in that strange scene in the middle of the night in the woods. If it was just regular people doing some ordinary legitimate work, why do it at 1 in the morning?

Several days later I was telling a friend this story, and he didn't believe me. It was during the daytime and we decided to go back to the scene. We basically retraced my steps exactly, parked in the same place and walked through the woods. We found the road and followed it to the clearing. When we got there we discovered that everything, including the crater, was completely gone. It was simply an empty clearing now. We looked around for clues and found nothing.

I posted this story on a paranormal forum many years ago, asking if anyone knew what these guys were doing. No one could give me an answer, apparently it's very odd that these guys were doing whatever they were doing in the dead of night.

I have a story...not scary or paranormal, just came across something very "weird", as the title of this thread asks.

While in Ohio in 1996, I drove deep into the mountains of southeast Ohio, parked and hiked into the woods, well away from any trails. I was a very long way from any town, and certainly miles away from any dwelling, and several miles into the woods from where I left my truck. As I tromped through a thick area of the woods (I wanted to make my presence known to any wildlife well in advance), I spotted something bright yellow on the floor of the forest. I walked up to it and discovered a 4-inch diameter pipe sticking straight up out of the ground, about 6 inches above the surface. It was metal, painted bright yellow, uncapped, no smell or odor coming from it, but extending very deep into the ground. The bright yellow paint made it obvious that it was not very old. All the trees and brush immediately around it had obviously been there many years though. The pipe was in the middle of a very dense area of trees and brush that extended for miles.

There was not a single trace anywhere of any construction, roadway, path, structure, dwelling.....nothing but very dense forest and a lot of ground brush, and I was many miles into the hills and mountains of southeast Ohio, a very sparse area. It appeared to be an air vent but as I hiked all around the area at least a half mile radius, I found nothing but dense forest and not a hint of what the "air vent" was connected to.

Any ideas on why a bright colored pipe would be protruding 6 inches above the ground so many miles into the woods and mountains?
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Two years ago I found the remains of two second generation (1955-1957) Chevy Bel Airs in very rough and heavily wooded terrain(basically surrounded by very steep and deep ravines) at least 2 miles from any road of any kind.

I was walking around some farmland in San Marcos Texas out in the middle of noplace and came upon a few tin shed structures. They were not very big, maybe 10' x 8'.

I started looking inside them and there were a bunch of old bottles and various things from like the 1950s/60s era.

I opened up one shed and it was empty but here is where it gets weird.

When I opened the shed and stuck my head inside I thought I heard rain hitting the tin shed. I closed the door, looked up, overcast day but not a drop of rain in sight.

I opened the door again, stuck my head in, and heard the rain again. I was like WTF is going on.

I walked inside of the shed and that's when the light hit them at the right angle for me to see what was making that noise.

The entire inside walls and ceiling of the shed were covered 3 inches deep in daddy long leggers. They all seemed to be interlocked with their legs. There must have been 50,000 of them. They were all tapping their right longest front leg on the tin of the shed in unison. It was one of the weirdest things I ever saw. They also seemed to put off a weird smell in large numbers like that.

I always wondered about this. Has anyone else ever seen such a thing?

I knew a girl who went inside an old shed like that at night. The shed was full of old furniture, and she used a lighter to navigate through the shed. She curiously looked through the objects inside and made her way to the back end of the shed where the ceiling was very low and caving in. As she looked around she got this urge to look up right above her head. When she did she saw the low ceiling was COVERED in tarantulas. Just as she saw them the heat from her lighter irritated the clump of spiders just above her head, and they tried to crawl away, exciting the whole mass which fell on top of her. She tripped balls and dropped the lighter, and was trapped in the back of the shed amongst old furniture in the pitch dark covered in tarantulas biting her.

She's still not the same years later.