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Tales of the Unexplained

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Here's a recent article about some unexplained sounds from the woods. Something natural? Unnatural?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-shrieks-video
I've heard strange sounds on trips, usually at night. And usually after I'm tucked up in bed. A faint scratching round the canoe, a quiet jostling of kitchen pots, and bristly brushing up against the tent fly. Altho' it's disturbing I pull my tuque down over my ears, roll over and drift off to sleep.
Anyone else hear some unexplained sounds from the woods?
 
The woods are full of mysteries. There is a local legend of a beast or some say a spirit that inhabits the woods where I live in Pa. It's called the Suscon Screamer, named for the road that goes past my lake. When I first bought property here in 2011 we were sitting around the fire around midnight when we heard the creepiest screaming sound any of us had ever heard. It must have been close because it was loud. I figured out what it probably was when I was researching the weasel family last year, a fisher.

There have been at least two other distinct sounds that I couldn't identify. One was loud and clear and kept getting closer to my tent, I couldn't even guess if it was a bird or mammal. I think some common animals, like a fox may make strange sounds.

Another mystery solved was a large swishing splash that I would hear at night while out in the boat. It wasn't the slap of a beavers tail but sounded more like a very large fish. After hearing this a few times I found out a year later that it was a beaver with a handicap that was unable to slap it's tail. That was a few years ago and I still see that beaver.

I had a weird thing happen a couple weeks ago while out for a night paddle. I was up against the shore enjoying the view of the crescent moon. I was almost a mile from the nearest house and road, the shoreline vegetation is thick with no trail and it was a two hours after dark. Shortly after I lit a Bic lighter I heard a voice ask," Is someone there? It startled the crap out of me and I responded,"Yes, WHO'S THERE? I never heard anything else out of them, never saw a flashlightor anything and I scanned the shoreline with a light and didn't see a boat. It really creeped me out.
 
A couple of years ago, while preparing for a short BWCA solo, I decided to take along a trail camera. I have several to monitor the deer at my home place, and thought it would be great to see if any critters investigated my camp as I slept !

Guess what ? Nothing showed up, at least not on camera.

Yeah, a trail camera might be a good thing, they are pretty light weight, and may be interesting thing at morning coffee to review !

Yes, I thought I've heard foot steps, different times, but I too just drifted off to sleep. One time, I think I was dreaming and woke myself up as I was hollering at something, that I thought was next to my tent. ! I heard nothing run off !

The mind can play some strange tricks !

Jim
 
The mind can play some strange tricks !

Jim
That's for sure. I've often woken up in the dead of night "having heard a recognizable and distinctive sound." A zipper, a voice, a growl, a cry, even a closing door. In the woods?! At the best of times I can find sleep pretty easily. At the worst of times I lie awake for hours, wishing I'd had one more boozy hot cocoa before bed.
 
We took possession of our current home back in 1998 - the Spring after the ice-storm - knowing full well that back in the 80's there had been a particularly gruesome murder committed next door (look up Raymond Steele). It was a few years later during a particularly hot, sleepless night (pre-central air) that I shot up in bed after hearing a blood-curdling scream - like a woman being tortured. I rushed out of the house in my skivies to be joined shortly thereafter by another neighbor who had a similar concern. Up until that moment, I had never heard the hunting cry of a barn owl.

As a hunter I've experienced numerous "unique" situations while sitting quietly in the woods. I quote "unique" because I suppose that these situations occur with some regularity - they just go unwitnessed. The wind noise from ducks doing a low-pass fly-by approaching mach 1 will certainly get your attention. A murmuration of starlings makes a similar, adrenaline-boosting whoosh.

This past August while camping in AP with my nephew, I woke myself with a yell after dreaming that a ferret/weasel/fisher beast had decided to make himself comfortable in my hammock. I chuckled myself back to sleep - nephew never woke up. There is one particular anomaly that I now know about and look for before hitting the hay: hard, shoreline pockets at water level - like a cut in a large rock. When the waves/ripples are just right, these can sound like an animal walking in the water - sploosh, plop, plop, sploosh.
 
I was awaken one night by the sound of something peeing on my tent. When I looked out there was a wolf walking away.

Sometimes the sounds we hear are a highlight of a trip, like wolves or coyotes howling or the call of the loon. Other times they are just annoying, like grebes at 3:00 AM and sometimes they are a mystery.

Some memorable sounds I've heard recently were beavers chewing, baby beavers mewing inside their lodge, otters heavy breathing and the more common deer snorting. Other times it's a symphony of many different sounds. Sometimes I paddle out at night just to sit and listen.
 
Oh, the all night grebe party! There's a reason to bring earplugs - if you want to get any sleep.

Can't remember any noise I wasn't able to identify or at least decide on a good explanation. It took me a while though to figure out that every time I drifted off to sleep and started to snore, the nearby beaver took that as a reason to slap its tail. Another thing to look for when choosing a campsite. The mind does play tricks. I can swear sometimes that I hear muffled voices coming from the river at night.
 
My family had a cabin in southern York County along the Susquehanna and I roamed the woods and farm fields for miles in all directions from age 8 to 16.

In those roaming I found three abandoned farmhouses, whose long dirt drives hadn’t been used in years and were impassibly overgrown. Two were not visibly from any dirt country road and they all were well built, still sound and in decent condition, if musty inside.

Musty, and creepy awesome to explore as a bold youngster. All three had been abandoned with everything still inside. Everything; clothes, furniture, Mason jars of home canned goods in the pantry, cups and plates in the cupboard, chairs around the kitchen table. Cue creepy music.

There was a Victrola in one with bunches of 78 records. One bedroom dresser drawer in another had stacks of 1940’s or 50’s baseball cards (had I only known).

The barns and outbuildings were equally fascinating. On the third floor attic of a barn, set inside double doors and a pulley wheel, a one-horse sleigh. A massive two-man bucksaw in another barn. Old wagons and implements, a cast iron corn shucker with flywheel, and pails and chains and objects unknown.

At least two of those old farmhouses were layer renovated in the ‘80’s or 90’s, but they were first abandoned in the 40’s and 50’s and sat that way for decades. It is a lingering mystery to me why families would abandon everything, even their clothes, and just disappear.

That part kinda freaked me out as a kid, wandering around inside a ghost house (not enough to not keep exploring), and to this day I wonder WTF happened. Still wish I had pocketed those baseball cards, but they were just old paper to me. And even back then I wanted that bucksaw.

We never took much from those abandoned farm houses. One thing I took and kept for years was a Civil War era letter, dated 1863, written in a weird paper-saving method; script in “portrait-mode”, with additional script in “landscape” atop that, both sides of a single piece of paper. It was overlapped hard to read, but decipherable; eventually given to a friend with an interest in that era.

Confession, we did take some of the 78’s outside and Annie Oakley them. Boys will be boys.

Confession #2, we eventually set the kitchen table in one farmhouse with plates, cups and cutlery, and mason jar preserves from the pantry. It was either an offering to the ghosts, or something to really spook the next visitors.
 
Scratchypants,

The wind noise from ducks doing a low-pass fly-by approaching mach 1 will certainly get your attention.

Yes, I'm glad that somebody else has recognized that sound... very strange at dusk since the ducks fly low overhead and can't be seen or are flying too fast. It's a strange sound from something whipping through the air very fast and would catch the attention of any UFO chaser.

Creepiest buildings seen in this area were probably built by hippies in the 60s or 70s or maybe hunters on the banks of the York river. One was built up against the side of a cliff with the cabin sort of glued to the cliff wall and a fireplace there against the cliff.. the inside of the cabin was black with soot.. And another in the same area built partially out of quonset curved steel and sheet metal. Creepy because one wonders how anybody could have been dumb enough, or crazy enough, to have gone to the trouble of building something like that.

Canoeing on Papineau creek a little further north, I found a stump on an island hiding a plastic bag with a diary in it. Someone was returning to the island to write daily entries... they described misery, depression, loss... each entry described life becoming worse, very dark. Changed the tone of spending the day there quite a bit, knowing that that writer may be in the area and watching, if still alive.
 
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Creepiest buildings seen in this area were probably built by hippies in the 60s or 70s or maybe hunters on the banks of the York river.

I visited a friend’s place in NW Montana years ago. He was renting a decently renovated farmhouse, with dilapidated silo, chicken coop and other outbuildings. The latter had all been crudely converted into something approximating living quarters.

The story was that sometime in the 70’s a band of hippie squatters had found the place; some were squatting in the house while others attempted convert the various outbuildings. A band of hippie squatters whose number apparently did not include a single carpenter, engineer or architect.

Or anyone who had ever endured a winter in NW Montana living in a chicken coop or silo.

The farmer owner visited while I was there and told me the end story; he found out about them, showed up toting blued steel and gave them 5 minutes to git out of range.

He used some other colorful words.
 
Some memorable sounds I've heard recently were beavers chewing, baby beavers mewing inside their lodge, otters heavy breathing and the more common deer snorting. Other times it's a symphony of many different sounds. Sometimes I paddle out at night just to sit and listen.

Funny This Fall in the BWCA, as I slipped by an active hut, I heard the mewing. I've heard it on our river in the Spring, as the young were calling for their parents during high water, swimming along the bank. this was the first in the Fall.
 
I though I heard a voice in the woods around Little Lobster lake. As I got closer, it sounded very much like a little old man muttering to himself -- up in a tree. If I hadn't seen a YouTube video of a porcupine "speaking" I would have been very weirded out.
 
This summer our son and his family stayed over for a weekend. A late arrival Friday night meant early to bed for everyone followed by a busy Saturday. That evening we enjoyed a dinner party that lasted well into the late hours. The kids trickled down to the basement to watch television or whatever they do down there, while "the grownups" reclined upstairs in a variety of chairs in a variety of positions, all within earshot of one another, and almost within reach of the groaning board. (http://www.word-detective.com/2010/1...board-collops/ ) Speaking of groaning boards, I selected a favourite chair of mine, an old rocking chair, and proceeded to find that sweet spot between the bookshelf stereo and the kitchen, between falling asleep and staying awake, gently rocking, rocking, rocking...The next morning our eldest grandson came upstairs and timidly approached his grandma. "Gramma, I think your house is haunted." He looked pale and not too well rested. We all took him seriously, and asked about his experience. There have been otherworldly stuff happen in my family so I take this seriously. As he explained the whole ordeal we walked into the front room with old wooden floors right between bookshelf stereo and kitchen... and I sat down, proceeding to rock gently, and at that moment we all recognized the mysterious creek, creek, creeek that had kept this poor scared boy up all night.
I never knew my rocking was scaring my g-son wide awake all night, otherwise I would've moved my chair. Poor kid. We all had a good laugh about it, but now that he's wise to the creaks and groans in gram and gramps house he sleeps better at night. And so do I.
 
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All three had been abandoned with everything still inside. Everything; clothes, furniture, Mason jars of home canned goods in the pantry, cups and plates in the cupboard, chairs around the kitchen table. Cue creepy music.
I heard a podcast on This American Life describing a very similar situation in Upstate New York. As a young teen this guy had been exploring an abandoned but fully furnished house near where he spent his summers. Old letters. Canned food. The whole works. His imagination ran wild and he came up with all kinds of dramatic explanations. Then in his 30s he wanted to find out what had really happened. The locals didn't want to talk to him but eventually through sleuthing he discovered the truth.. It turned out that after the owners died, there was a lawsuit among the heirs. No one could remove anything from the house so it just sat there for decades.
 
Seems like everything become a large Grizzly bear at night... I'm usually bad for making weird sounds at night especially if I've been eating too much:rolleyes:...
One thing that always drive me insane is wind, high wind during the night make me sleep lightly, worrying about stuff I can't control!!
 
During that same trip back in August, my nephew and I went for a leisurely paddle around Sylvia Lake. We were at the northern end when a red-tailed hawk alit on the top of a spruce. The lad, I can only surmise in attempt to communicate, yells "Hey!". His exclamation was followed by an echo - "Hey!" and then, about 2 seconds later, another echo - "Hey!" That was weird - no topography I knew of in the area that would produce such a delayed, third bounce. Brow furrowed, I asked him to do it again - "Hey!...Hey!..............Hey!" He turned to me from the bow seat with a crooked look as if I was to explain to him what was going on. I said okay - do it one more time. "Hey!...Hey!..........heeYYaaa! My blood ran cold - that wasn't an echo. Is someone messing with us? There's nothing in that direction of the park - hiking trails, canoe routes, other attractions. Then, as we're making the bend around the little island, 2 ravens fly out of the woods and over the lake towards us. I had heard of ravens mimicking sounds, but in all my years I had never heard such a perfect replication of a human voice.
 
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The mind does play tricks...
This!!! As a scientist, I know nothing goes bump in the night with out a perfectly good reason. Statistically I know how few people are harmed by anything in the woods, so when I hear a pot fall, I think raccoon not grizzly bear. I'm also too lazy to open the tent to have a look, so I comforted by my statistics. The only time I was truly terrified happened in a rain storm. It was raining hard, and blowing, when the lighting started. There were several loud cracks close by, then boom, white light, I could smell ozone everywhere. I thought this is how I die. Alone, in a backing tent, along a river. There was no where to run to, so I just laid there wondering who would find me. I awoke to adowned tree, branches every where. A microburst tornado went up the valley I was in.

edit: and I was unharmed , as usual
 
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Although not mysterious, thunderstorms are the scariest thing out there to me. T storms are pretty rare where I've been tripping in Alaska for almost thirty years and I had forgotten how intense they can be. One evening In Pa. last June I was in my baker tent at my lake house enjoying an approaching storm. As it got closer and louder and windier I started to feel like I was in harms way and felt foolish for sitting in a tent when there was a perfectly good house 50 feet away. I was happy to have the option of going inside.
 
I often wander the woods under the pitch of night. I can think of two times that can't be explained. Once, we were sent home early from work because of a huge snowstorm. Naturally, I went for a hike through the woods. I followed an old cart path up a hill, as it petered out, I kept thinking "just a little further". Well I finally found myself in the middle of the woods at night during a Nor'easter. I couldn't find the way back but I knew I could just follow this streambed downhill to another road and get back to my car. As I trudged downhill, this hair-raising feeling of an evil presence suddenly surrounded me. I stopped, looked and listened but detected nothing. So I turned and continued downhill. Very soon, the feeling dispelled completely, which would not have happened if it was a mere case of the willies. It still puzzles me.

Another time, same woods, I was walking under the starlight on a paved but gated-off roadway through an Army Corps facility. Every once in a while I see someone else out there at night but they always have a flashlight and I duck into the woods until they pass. This time I was just enjoying the rhythm of walking, letting my mind wander when inexplicably I suddenly turned to my left and gave a loud shout into the woods. Nothing. There was nothing there that I could tell. I just stood there scratching my head wondering what possessed me to do that.
 
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