The Clearing

A story from my expedition days, told in greentext for expediency

>3 years ago

>Up at my /k/abin innawoods in northern PA with 2 friends

>we decide to go for an all-out 4 day hike

>food, water, guns, booze, smokes check

>we all decide to hike north since we know the areas to the west pretty well and we've never gone far north before

>First day of hike, we come across a few deer and a bobcat, otherwise nothing interesting

>bed down for the night, wake up early

>we pack up our tent and continue on our trek

>2nd day is a lot quieter and much colder

>at around 9am it seemed to get a lot colder, it had been slightly foggy all morning, but around 9 it really started to get unnaturally thick

>feeling our way around and navigating by compass, I start to get the feeling like we're being followed at a distance, despite the pea soup fog around us

>one by one, my friends start to become visibly tense

>about an hour and a half into this while I'm on point navigating, I signal with my hand for everyone to stop walking

>we hear something behind us a good distance crunching leaves then stopping abruptly

>we all turn our guns in the direction of the sound and my friend Dave shouts "IF ANYONE IS FOLLOWING US KNOCK IT OFF, WE HAVE GUNS"

>we stop moving for about 5 minutes listening intently for anything

>no sounds

>resume hiking north, still knowing that we're being followed

>fog still err'where, visibility no more than 15 yards

>we hike for another few hours, stopping every so often to listen for whatever was following us, and a few times it seemed like we had lost whatever it was, man, animal or other.

>visibility throughout the day fluctuated generally from 15 yards to about 30

>at around 3 in the afternoon, the severely dense woods give way to a rather large clearing, I'd estimate a full acre or so

>after stumbling around the clearing for about an hour or so, the fog starts to burn off, visibility increasing quite a bit

>Notice that the clearing appears to be almost perfectly oval in shape, and in the middle, there were 6 sharpened sticks arranged in a hexagon about 4 feet apart from eachother, all facing outward from the middle

>realize that we're about 2 days hiking distance from any civilization

>okay this is weird.jpg

>anyway we decide to set up camp and get a good fire going.

>we put up our large tent and gather some wood, including those weird sticks we found, and get a roaring fire going

>eat our food and we start getting ready for the night

>notice we haven't heard any animal sounds all night, not so much as a bird chirping in the last few hours

>we then become aware of this weird high pitched sound, like a cricket's chirp, but constant and a lot quieter coming from the woods

>welp we already have camp set up, no point in trying to move on

>still freaked out, we set up watch, with my friend mike getting first watch

>Dave and I head to bed at around 10, leaving mike on watch with an SKS and 2 stripper clips

>11:19pm

>awakened to the sound of a single shot

>Stumble out of the tent to see a visibly disturbed Mike clutching the gun for dear life with the bayonet unfolded

>ask him what happened and he tells us that he saw a HUGE silhouette moving back and forth at the edge of the clearing

>Now we're all wide awake, with loaded guns, and scared as fuck

>we all sit outside the tent on different sides, using shitty flashlights to try and illuminate whatever is out there

>for about 3 hours, we don't spot anything and sort of attribute it to nerves, until about 2:30 in the morning we hear what sounds like disembodied conversations happening at varying distances away from us.

>its loud enough to know that its talking, but not loud enough to determine what is being said

>4am fog rolls back in, voices stop

>deathly silence, saying anything sounds loud as fuck

>nopenopenopenopenope

>luckily the fog burns off around 8:30 this time and as it does, we see a huge scar in the dirt on one edge of the clearing, where all the sod was ripped up, that was NOT there the day before

>Grab our shit, undo the tent as fast as is humanly possible and nope the fuck into the woods on the opposite side

>we walk as fast as possible without actually running, first to the west, and then south

We covered about twice the distance that we did the day before, and linked up with a trail that I was familiar with before heading back to the cabin and passing the fuck out.

Still don't know what the fuck happened back there. Personally I believe we were being hunted by a black bear or something, but that clearing was fucking weird. Like the place is a full 2 day hike from the nearest civilization, and the woods are too dense for people on quads to reach it. Finding it was like finding a needle in a haystack, yet someone was obviously there before.

Never hiking north again. never never never.