Camping Horror Stories

[Gearspoke]

Happy new year everybody!

I thought we could start things off with interesting and scary camping stories that we experienced, or heard from someone.

My favorite has always been the Dyatlov Pass Incident

From my own personal experience:

I was just a youngster when I went camping with my Mom and Dad. We were in the foothills of Mt. Ranier, near the Ohanapecosh river and we had bedded down for the night. As I was younger than 5 years old at the time, we were sleeping in the same tent. Our spot was in the middle of the woods, far away from designated campgrounds and the like. In the middle of the night, I was suddenly awoken by my Mother's hushed and concerned voice. She had heard something rustling around outside of the tent. My Father scrambled to his feet and told my Mom to stay in the tent and keep me safe. I heard some rustling, and what sounded like some deep growling, and my Dad started yelling: "Hey! HEY! Get out of here! HEY!"
The commotion continued as my Mom held me tightly. After what seemed like forever, my Dad made his way back into the tent. He was covered in dirt and leaves, and he had a wild look on his face. My Mom asked him if he was okay, and he just said "We should leave."
We packed up our bags and left, and we never camped there again.

To this day, my father won't speak of the incident. I don't know what he saw out there in the woods, but it still scares me to think about it.

[bluestar99]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

Not really a horror story, but I guess it could have been. When I was a kid our family camped for 3 weeks each summer. We covered the whole country. About 1965 we were staying in Yellowstone NP. There were 6 of us in a tent. My dad had made a camp kitchen that went across the back of the station wagon that Mom operated out of. We were not allowed in there. Mom also disliked the pit toilets. So she had a second tent that was setup as a potty tent. The kind of potty that is just a seat with a plastic bag hanging from the bottom. The tent was a small single pole tent with Davey Crockett's picture on it. Well during the middle of the night we were wakened by the sound of Bears rummaging around our site. The food was in the car so they could not get that but when we got up in the morning the Bears had knocked over and trampled the potty tent. Quite a mess and Mom was ticked off. The rest of us started putting Davey back together while mom got the camp kitchen open and started breakfast. A short time later we heard my mom screaming "get out of here" ! When we looked an adult bear had his front feet on the tailgate shopping for goodies in the camp kitchen. Mom grabbed a pot off the table and started banging and yelling and the bear ran off. Not the smartest move on her part but the bear had it's dirty paws in her kitchen!

Here is a picture of our camping setup. Sorry but no shot of the camp kitchen.....

[MacGyver]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

I won't tell the story again, but that flood we went through has got to be the most scared I've ever been in my life. We've all heard about the power of water but until you see something that close up and personal, I don't think you realize just how powerful it really is.

On a lighter note and going back to my absolutely first camping trip, a friend of mine and I had gone to a State Park in Pennsylvania right after we got our driver's licenses. I still laugh about how green we were back then. We didn't have the first clue about camping. We were in a $30 tent and had all brand new gear that we had to figure out how to use. I know we'd gone through quite a few mantles trying to get the Coleman lantern going and getting the stove pumped up and running smooth was another nightmare. But, somehow we'd figured things out enough to get through the first day and settled down for the night.

Not long after falling asleep there was this constant crunching of leaves right outside the tent that woke us both up. Both too chicken to look out, we started yelling and clapping to try to chase the intruder away. We stopped and listened, just to have the crunching of leaves start again. We did that a couple of times but the crunching wouldn't stop. We finally got the nerve to look out and discovered that our visitor was a skunk. We...umm... got really quiet after that. I can't remember what we did after that but I'm pretty sure we just let him do whatever he wanted and let him go on his way. Waking up in the morning, we found out what he wanted. He'd dragged a loaf of bread down off the table and had his fill and moved on. Lesson learned. No food left out. DUH!

[Gearspoke]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

@Macgyver and @bluestarr99 both stories were perfect run ins with the wild life. See in Yosemite where I spent nearly every summer, was always teaming with wildlife, and we just stored our food/ garbage bags in trees. Well not the smartest, because there is not telling what lengths a brown bear will go to get food. Once time we heard a loud thug outside out tent and then some grumbling. We of course went to inspect but by the time we got or shoes on, I guess the bear saw our lights and ran off with our garbage bag that we thought they couldn't get too. It was actually quite comical, because when we decided to track down the bear, we just had to follow the garbage trail. Lucky the bear had no interest in the plastic bag and left that behind!

[thunderseed]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

I went on a solo kayaking trip around the gulf islands for a few weeks and there were a few incidences that were kind of creepy.
I explored a little cemetary on Valdez island that is just off the shores of the abandoned Shingle Point Reservation and while I was there, I just happened to run into the caretaker. She told me it was haunted there and that many campers that camped overnight on the shores would hear strange noises coming from the cemetary.

She told me the cemetary and land was off limits and they didn't want people going in there because it had already been vandalized but she trusted me and was more than happy to let me go check everything out. What I saw was really repulsive and sad. Some of the old tombs and gravestones were completely destroyed (by terrible vandals I suppose) and when I got really close to them I actually saw the bones all broken up inside and there were even human bones scattered ontop of one tomb. I don't know what kind of aweful person would desecrate a grave like that but it really made me sad to see and it wouldn't surprise me if that place was haunted because of how disrespected the cemetary is.
I don't understand why the Shingle Point Reserve doesn't do anything to restore those graves. I do not think the graves belong to first nations people though, I am pretty sure they belong to white people. If the story the caretaker told me was correct, those graves belonged to a bunch of loggers from back in the day. The names on some of the markers seemed Caucasian too, such as "Old Bill" who died in 1911.

I decided not to camp anywhere near Valdez that night and kayaked all the way to Decourcy Island, which turned out to be a lot worse. As soon as dusk hit mosquitos as thick of blankets started to eat me alive (never in my life have I ever seen that many mosquitos in one place before, these things even managed to bite through my clothes), thankfully I managed to trap myself in my hammock. I was sleeping in a little hammock that had a mosquito screen attatched over it, but turns out the spot that I camped at was also infested with mice. All night long mice crawled all over my hammock. I guess they were trying to find a place to hide from the racoons, but they liked to climb up the trees, along the hammock string and across the mosquito net on my hammock. That's okay, I didn't want to sleep at all that night anyway...

Then when I was kayaking all the way to Galiano Island, I got caught in treacherous waves along this bajillion mile cliff side that had nowhere to stop on (at least it felt like it was a bajillion miles) and I was kayaking for hours without seeing anybody in direct sun and I was near close to getting very dissorientated from heat stroke. The cliffsides all had these amazing water carvings on them and looking at them for so long your eyes start playing tricks on you, I started seeing things that weren't there, and being alone, it was really creepy! Then I came across this terrifying peice of driftwood that just floated in front of me, and maybe if I had been in my right mind I would have thought it was a lovely carving, but I was paranoid and for some reason it scared the crap out of me and I didn't understand why it was there. It looked like a really nice, gigantic carving of a dragon, but I was so paranoid I thought the dragon was really staring at me. I guess maybe someone carved it and it somehow got swept out to sea. I did think about dragging it along with my kayak but I got really bad vibes from it, which could have just been my paranoia lol. I paddled away from it as fast as I could thinking it was going to kill me or something.

[tplife]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

Gearspoke, you mean black bears, right? There are no brown bears here in California. According to one account, the last known Grizzly bear killed was south of Yosemite in the Sierra foothills in 1922. Black bears are plentiful enough to warrant a hunting season with tag distribution - different habitat requirements and a better adaptability around people. I'm sure you meant black bears, they're clever and destructive in their quest for "a pic-n-ic basket Booboo!".

[CMPR1966]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

I can't decide on any one story. Could it be the time as a six year old sitting around the campfire, in a nearly empty Pennsylvania State Park, far enough away from any town (in my mind) to be in the middle of no where. As my brothers and I enjoyed playing in the fire, my brother out of nowhere poked me right in the eyelid and brow with a flaming stick. I can still remember my Dad dumping canteens of water on my eye that we had filled earlier from the hand pump a ways from our sight. Mom applied some cream and we made a trip to a town the next morning for a Doctor to look at it. All turned out well.
It could be when I was maybe four or so and was gathering fire wood with my Dad and brothers and we saw lots of bear tracks. I remember Dad saying "Don't say anything to your Mother!", it took many years before any of us ever told her.
It could be any number of stories of using Coleman fuel to help light campfires with wet wood. Seems like loosing the hair on your shins would stick with a feller, but it always seems like a good idea at the time.

[Gearspoke]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

Goodness, silly me, sometime stories smudge together over time.

I was thinking of my backpacking trip through Alaska. This photographer was in his car taking photos of bears walking down the Mount Wrangell (volcano). We were hiking down as well, so we kept our distance, which was a smart idea, because the bears became extremely interested in the car and started sniffing and walking around it. We got the heck out of dodge and told the first car that passed us to check that the photographer was alright. But those were brown bears. Yosemite has the black bears!

[bluestar99]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

What is it about kids and campfires? When I was about 10 years old we were making Samores over the fire. My marshmallow was just about done when it caught on fire. The plan was to blow out the flames and save my work. I jerked the stick out of the fire just to see the flaming marshmallow coming off the stick and right at my face. Still flaming it stuck to my nose gluing my glasses to my face. The whole family busted out laughing, while I tried to get the hot mess off my nose. This left me with some bad burns, but after seeing them my family, felt bad for laughing. Rarely do I toast marshmallows anymore.

[CMPR1966]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

Well told bluestar99. I sat here alone in my office laughing out loud right along with your family as I read your story. What is it about people getting hurt that makes us laugh.
Laughing too hard always gets in the way of rendering assistance.

[Cog1]

Re: Camping Horror Stories

In college my friends and I had started to get into fishing and camping. We all had cheap equipment and my friend had a 6-man tent that belonged to his father which was volunteered as our housing. 4 of us converged upon a central park to camp for a few nights (I drove 5 hours there and so did another friend; the others drove 2 hours). We get to the campsite around 9 PM when the sunlight is almost all gone. Set up in the dark. No rainfly. "My little brother used this last and must not have packed the rainfly with it!" No big deal. Laid back and started chatting. Maybe 45 mins later a light drizzle starts. We start discussing what we'll do if there's an actual rainstorm. After talking about it decide that we'll try and weather it out. The drizzle progresses to a thunderstorm: heavy downpour, lots of lightning and thunder. Our plans quickly changed once we got wet!

We literally collapsed the tent, rolled it up with all of our stuff inside, threw it in the bed of my buddy's truck, and drove 2 hours to his house. I guess it's not anything dangerous or terrible, esp. since we weren't stranded, but it was kind of funny to have such a bad experience for our first camping trip. I always triple check my gear and don't really like relying on other people to supply stuff now unless I can visually confirm that it's in good condition. I like backcountry canoe camping so if we forget something we have to go without... and some of the fishing opener trips / Sept trips I have been on there are freezing temps overnight, so if your tent or sleeping bag is compromised you will have a miserable night in a space blanket (if you were smart enough to bring one ...)

I guess that brings me to another story, a few yrs ago for fishing opener 4 of us went to the BWCA. The first day it was a torrential downpour and we decided we will just travel as much as we can. Ice has just melted and it is in the 40s, windy, rainy. We are snug in our rain gear. At each portage we have to drain at least 1" of standing water in the bottom of the canoes.

We get to camp at probably 5 or 6 PM. It ahs been raining for almost 5 days straight according to some guys we passed earlier in the day. The ground is MUD (or rock). We decided to set up a tarp to give us a small sheltered area where we can set up the tents (not stake them down) so they don't get wet from the rain. After the tents are set up we decide we want to get comfortable: change into dry clothes, cook up some grub, etc.

All 3 of my friends had backpacking packs which offered no resistance to water. Most of their clothes were wet and all 3 of their sleeping bags were drenched. It is supposed to be below freezing that night. I had my clothes in a dry bag and my sleeping bag looked OK so I volunteered to cook dinner. First night feast consisted of a steak for each guy ... except they were still frozen solid. Probably due to the stress we didn't think of doing an alternative dinner, so I spent probably 1.5-2 hrs hunched over this stove in the drizzle in my rain gear cooking little strips of steak. I think I probably used 12 oz of our white gas for my MSR stove, which was about 1/2 of what we'd brought... UH-OH. Had to be conservative with coffee/etc. the rest of the trip.

Anyways, get dinner cooked up, and I went to get my bed stuff ready and much to my dismay discover that my sleeping bag had gotten wet ... the stuff-sac just looked dry. So we have 4 guys with wet bags and a freezing night.

I had 2 space blankets in my first aid kit which I NEVER thought I'd use, but 2 of us were fortunate enough to use them that night ... the other 2 had to share a wet sleeping bag together. I woke up at 3 AM with my friend crying out in pain ... I guess being snugged into a mummy bag with another guy caused some pretty intense pain; his collarbone was being pressed on pretty hard or something.

We fortunately had a nice day the next day to air out all of our stuff and dry up ... Not sure how the guys we passed coming in who said it'd been raining for 5 days straight did it ... TBH I'd probably have left early and gone to stay at a hotel and still fished during the day or something .. Wouldn't have been too bad between 4 guys, esp. since you have the comfort.