My uncle's experience was the best story I can come up with at the moment. It's much better told in first person narrative, so ... read this in your best Sam Elliot voice.
Late 70s early 80s, I was cowboying at Eaton's Ranch in Wyoming. Beautiful, wild country with more than a few secrets hidden away in those mountains. We worked hard and played harder in those days. I was seeing this little gal, who later became my first wife and figured that a lakeside wilderness picnic and fishing expedition might be in order and just the ticket to impress this cutie.
We park the pickup at the trailhead and follow the stream up about a half mile with all the necessities on our backs, well almost all. Mort, my trusty blue heeler dog followed close. Camp is set up about 20 yards off the edge of the lake and we catch our limits of trout before dark and commence to cooking em up at the campfire. all in all, very romantic. As darkness settled in, our small fire the only light for miles, we all started feeling extremely uneasy. Now I've been guiding hunters, working forest service jobs and generally living in the mountains for years, so this uneasy feeling just don't set right, but being in a more amorous mood, I try to ignore it. It's not working. She feels it too. Mort's ears are erect and he's staring intently at the edge of the timber.
"Someone's out there" she says. Not some-thing, some-one.... Being a mountain ranch-raised gal, she's not the type to spook easy, and I'm immediately aware of the lack of weight on my hip, where the 44 mag Blackhawk typically resides. The image of it under the seat of the pickup flashes across my mind. "Almost all the necessities". We watch the edge of the timber and try to make out exactly what the hell is out there, or who... a figure, well, more of a presence moves parallel to the tree line real slow and stops again. Mort starts whining like he's scared. Didn't bark or yip, just a low whine. Trying to hope it's someone who just stumbled onto our camp and trying not to intrude, I holler out "Well don't be shy, come on in and have a drink!". No response. A little more movement, but nothing else. Then the wind starts to shift towards us and this God-Awful smell somewhere between rotting flesh and sh!t fills our nostrils and my plans shift immediately into how the hell we're going to get out of here. I tell the gal as soon as I get up, grab ahold of my belt and run. We have a long sprint on a dark trai the pitch black. I'm thinking to myself, we'll never make it. Whatever that thing is, it's big and not scared of us. I stand up, and she with me, hand firmly on my belt and we run. The figure steps into the Half-light, tall and big. We didn't waste any more time. In two steps, we were at a full sprint down the trail back to the pickup and the pistol under the seat.
Running hard through the dark, branches whipping at every piece of us, we could hear heavy footsteps behind us and across the stream.... gaining. We ran harder. It kept pace stride for stride, paralleling us across the water, snapping branches and ripping through the underbrush. Then, the sickening sound of water splashing and rocks shifting under heavy feet..... crossing towards us. We were close to the trailhead and I grabbed her hand off my belt and pulled her in front of me, my lungs were about to give out and she was as fast as I was anyhow. I told her not to stop no matter what. (Looking back, she wasn't going to argue the topic either way. She told me later, the thought to trip me along the way had crossed her mind. )
As she sped down the trail, I tried to keep up, legs and lungs about to give way, the steps were closing fast behind me and I was giving it all I had. I could feel the presence of a hand about to grab me the entire last 100 yards or so of the run. Any second was going to be my last. We burst off the trail and she was starting the pickup and throwing it in gear, I leaped in the bed on the move and Mort bailed in behind me. As the little truck peeled gravel and flicked on the headlights, we got outta there and back to the ranch in record time. We didn't say anything to anyone for years about that night, but it kinda bonded us together...for a while.
It rained hard for the next week and there was plenty of work to do at the ranch(that's what I told myself anyways), but dang it, all my gear was still back there. I eventually worked up the nerve to go back and get my stuff, this time loaded with a bit more iron. Getting back to the small lake and where our campsite was, not a scrap of anything we brought in was there. Bedrolls, fishing poles, skillet, everything was gone! I looked for a little bit, but that same uneasy feeling hit me again and I high-tailed it back to the road. Never went back.
That is one of the creepiest ones yet. And thank you for sharing it. What do you think it could have been?
All the more reason to have a good firearm at all times
