I went camping alone for two nights because I had some time off and didn’t really have anything else planned. The place wasn’t supposed to be dangerous or anything. There was a lake, some old logging roads and a few campsites, that’s about it.
I had seen some scary legends stories about the area before going, but I don’t usually believe that stuff. There was one about a man who lived somewhere in the woods and supposedly ate people, but every version of it was different and most of them sounded like somebody had made it up after drinking too much.
The first night was fine.
The next afternoon I walked farther from the campsite than I meant to. I was looking for the lake from the other side because I thought there was supposed to be an old road going around it. There probably was. I just didn’t find it.
Instead I found footprints.
They were barefoot footprints in the mud.
I thought that was strange because the ground there was full of rocks and little branches and I wouldn’t want to walk around without shoes. Then I figured maybe somebody had lost their shoes. People do weird things.
There was a backpack next to a tree about ten minutes later.
I opened it because I thought whoever owned it might have left it there while looking for something. There was a flashlight, some food, a water bottle and a wallet.
The wallet had an ID in it.
I looked at the name but it didn’t mean anything to me, so I put everything back.
I should probably have left it alone.
Anyway, there was smoke ahead.
Not a lot. Just enough that I could see it through the trees.
There was a small fire in a clearing and a man sitting beside it.
He looked like somebody who had been living out there for a while. Dirty jacket, beard, old boots, nothing particularly strange. He asked if I was lost.
I said no.
I was lost.
I don’t know why I said no. Maybe because saying yes makes you sound more helpless than you actually are, even when you’re obviously standing in the middle of the forest with no idea where you are.
He asked if I wanted food.
I told him I had some.
He laughed and said that was good.
There were bones around the fire.
I noticed them after I sat down.
Most of them looked like animal bones, which made sense. He said he hunted and I believed him because why wouldn’t I.
Then I saw one that didn’t look like an animal bone.
I asked him what it was.
He said deer.
I looked at it again.
It probably wasn’t deer.
I didn’t argue because I didn’t really see the point.
He started talking about people who came through the forest. Hunters mostly, sometimes hikers. He knew there was a campground nearby and asked where I was staying.
I told him.
Then he asked if I was alone.
I said yes.
He looked at me for a second and said, “That’s not very smart.”
I thought he meant the camping.
Maybe he did.
There was something cooking over the fire. I couldn’t see what it was because he had put a metal pot over it, but the smell was getting stronger.
He offered me some.
I said no.
He said I should try it.
I said I wasn’t hungry.
That wasn’t true either.
I was starving.
I just didn’t want to eat whatever was in that pot.
He got up and walked over to the backpack I’d found.
I don’t know how he knew about it.
He picked up the wallet.
Then he asked if I knew the man whose name was on the ID.
I said no.
He said, “Good.”
That was when I left.
I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I just stood up and told him I needed to get back before dark.
He said I could stay.
I told him I’d rather go.
Then he said something like, “You won’t make it back before dark.”
I remember thinking he sounded almost annoyed.
Not worried.
Annoyed.
So I started walking.
He didn’t follow me immediately.
I thought maybe that was it and I’d made the whole thing bigger in my head than it really was.
Then I heard him behind me.
Not running.
Just walking.
I kept going.
After maybe ten minutes I looked back and couldn’t see him.
I actually felt stupid at that point.
I thought I’d scared myself because of some bones and a weird guy in the woods, which is probably what I would have told somebody if I had gotten back normally.
Then I heard him call my name.
I stopped.
I hadn’t told him my name.
I turned around but there was nobody there.
I waited for a while.
Nothing.
Then I heard him again, farther away this time.
I started walking faster.
The annoying thing was I still didn’t know where the road was. I had already been lost before meeting him, so running away from him didn’t exactly improve the situation.
I eventually found the logging road around sunset.
There was an old truck parked there.
Nobody inside.
I got in because the door was unlocked.
I know that’s probably not something you’re supposed to do, but at that point I was more concerned about the guy in the forest than stealing a truck.
The keys weren’t there anyway.
I sat inside for maybe twenty minutes.
Then I saw the man standing between the trees.
He wasn’t moving.
He just looked at the truck.
I didn’t wait to see what he wanted.
I ran the rest of the way to the main road and got picked up by a guy driving back toward town.
I told him I had gotten lost.
I didn’t tell him about the man.
I don’t know why.
Maybe because it sounded stupid.
Later I went back with the police and showed them roughly where the clearing had been.
They found the fire.
They found the backpack too.
The wallet was gone.
The bones were there, although they couldn’t tell me what all of them were from.
The man was gone.
They searched the area but didn’t find a cabin or any place where someone could have been living.
I looked up the name from the ID later.
The man had disappeared about eight years earlier.
He was a fisherman.
His family had apparently spent months looking for him.
I don’t know what happened to him.
I also don’t know who the guy by the fire was.
I’ve read long scary stories to read online about people disappearing in forests since then, which is probably not helping because every time there’s a story about somebody finding a campfire somewhere they shouldn’t, I start thinking about that place again.
The part I keep coming back to isn’t even the bones.
It’s the wallet.
Because I know I put it back in the backpack.
And the guy knew exactly which pocket it was in.
I never told him I’d found it
