Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreigning. I'm Ben, and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. Whether you're a new camper or returning one, I'm glad you're here.
[00:00:17] Tonight's story is about a camper who faced something a little more paranormal than he was anticipating during his last camping visit.
[00:00:27] Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story?
[00:00:32] I used to think people were the scariest thing you could run into in the woods. Not bears, not coyotes, not snakes.
[00:00:41] But people.
[00:00:43] Animals usually want one of three things. Food, space, or to not be surprised.
[00:00:48] But people are complicated.
[00:00:51] People get bored, People get angry.
[00:00:54] People get drunk.
[00:00:55] People decide, for reasons you and I will never understand, that tonight you're going to be their entertainment.
[00:01:04] That is what I thought was happening to me the night I camped alone in the hollow.
[00:01:10] I thought some guy had followed me out there.
[00:01:13] I thought he was messing with me.
[00:01:15] And for most of the night, honestly, that was the only explanation I could handle.
[00:01:20] The Hollow wasn't an official campground. It was one of those spots you only hear about from people who say things like, don't tell anybody I told you about this.
[00:01:30] It sat about three miles off an old logging road down a narrow trail that dipped into a valley thick with pine and mountain laurel.
[00:01:40] There was a creek down there, a flat patch of ground, a stone ring fire someone had built years ago.
[00:01:48] It was perfect, or at least it looked perfect when I got there.
[00:01:53] I hiked in late afternoon, set up my tent, collected some wood and got a small fire going. As light started to fade, I remember thinking how quiet it was.
[00:02:05] Not silent exactly. The woods are never silent. But there was no road noise, no voices, no distant hummer civilization.
[00:02:15] Just the creak, the fire, and the occasional pop of wood.
[00:02:21] I ate dinner from one of those foil backpacking meals, drank a little bit of whiskey and sat there feeling like I had done something good for myself. I'd been stressed for months. Work, bills, family stuff. Nothing tragic. Just the ordinary weight of being alive.
[00:02:40] I sat there alone beside that fire. I finally felt like something in my chest had loosened.
[00:02:47] Then, just after dark, I heard someone cough.
[00:02:52] This wasn't an animal, not a branch breaking, a cough. A human cough.
[00:02:58] It came from somewhere past the edge of the firelight, maybe 30, 40ft away, where the trees were close enough to together that the darkness looked solid.
[00:03:10] I froze with my cup in my mouth.
[00:03:13] Hello?
[00:03:15] No one answered.
[00:03:16] I just waited, listening. Yet the creek kept moving and the fire kept snapping.
[00:03:23] Then I Heard it again.
[00:03:24] A dry, deliberate cough, like someone clearing their throat to make sure I knew they were there.
[00:03:33] Now. This time I stood up. Hey.
[00:03:35] I didn't know anyone else was out here.
[00:03:38] Still nothing.
[00:03:40] I grabbed my headlamp from the log beside me and clicked it on. The beam cut through the trees, catching the bark and leaves and the pale undersides of the branches.
[00:03:51] I swept across the woods.
[00:03:53] Nothing. No person. No eyes.
[00:03:56] No movement.
[00:03:58] Just trees.
[00:04:00] I told myself it had to be another camper, maybe someone hiking in late.
[00:04:05] Maybe they didn't want to answer because I'd startled them or because they were embarrassed to be caught standing there.
[00:04:12] So I tried again.
[00:04:13] Is everything okay?
[00:04:15] No response.
[00:04:17] But then, further away, I heard a twig snap.
[00:04:21] I swung the light over, but still there was nothing.
[00:04:25] I stood there for maybe a full minute, my heart now tapping a little harder before I finally sat back down.
[00:04:33] Though, I no longer felt relaxed. The woods had changed in that way they do when you know or think you know that something or someone is watching you.
[00:04:45] The darkness no longer feels empty.
[00:04:48] For the next half hour, nothing happened.
[00:04:51] I think I had convinced myself I had imagined it. The whiskey, the fire, the isolation.
[00:04:57] Maybe a deer was making a weird noise.
[00:05:00] Then something hit my tent. It wasn't hard, more like a flick.
[00:05:05] A tiny impact.
[00:05:07] A tiny impact against the nylon.
[00:05:11] I turned and looked when it was hit again, a small little tick.
[00:05:16] A pebble.
[00:05:17] I knew the sound I'd heard when I was a kid, when my younger brother used to throw gravel at my bedroom window.
[00:05:24] Seriously, come on, who's out there? I yelled out of my tent.
[00:05:30] But again I was offered nothing in return, only the tick of another pebble hitting my tent.
[00:05:38] I don't know what your problem is, but I'm not in the mood.
[00:05:42] I yelled, shining my flashlight into the trees.
[00:05:46] But again, no one answered.
[00:05:49] The temperature seemed to drop the moment I left the light of the fire behind.
[00:05:56] My boots sank into the soft pine needles. The flashlight caught the rough, black tree trunks all around me.
[00:06:03] When I finally saw something move, maybe 20 yards away, a shape slipping behind a pine. Human height, human width.
[00:06:13] Hey.
[00:06:14] I started toward it, which was stupid, I know that now. But in the moment, I was just angry enough to make myself brave.
[00:06:23] The shape moved again, deeper into the woods.
[00:06:28] I saw the suggestion of a shoulder, the side of a head, I think. Then gone.
[00:06:34] And I stopped.
[00:06:36] Because suddenly I realized whoever this was, whatever this was, had not run.
[00:06:44] They'd only moved far enough away to stay just outside the beam of my flashlight.
[00:06:49] And that scared me more than Anything more than if they had just charged at me with a knife.
[00:06:57] I backed towards the camp, keep keeping the flashlight pointed at the last tree I saw the person at.
[00:07:03] Alright. Haha, very funny. You win.
[00:07:07] My voice cracked.
[00:07:09] I packed up my food and everything scented, hung the bag from a branch like I was worried about bears, and crawled into my tent with the flashlight, my pocket knife and my phone. Of course, with no service, I lay there atop my sleeping bag, shoes still on, listening. For a long time there was only the creek, but just like before, came something else.
[00:07:36] Slow, unhurried footsteps circling the camp.
[00:07:42] Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. Not four legged randomness.
[00:07:50] Two feet. Somebody walking.
[00:07:53] I held my breath and watched the dark fabric of the tent. The footsteps stopped near the fire.
[00:08:00] I could hear the embers shifting.
[00:08:03] Then I finally heard a man's voice call, you awake?
[00:08:08] Every muscle in my body locked.
[00:08:11] He was right there, not shouting from the trees.
[00:08:15] Hey, I said. Are you awake in there?
[00:08:19] It was calm, but not friendly.
[00:08:23] I gripped my pocket knife so hard my hand hurt.
[00:08:26] After a moment the footsteps resumed. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
[00:08:34] Now whoever this was circled the tent once, then stopped, stopped right outside the door flap.
[00:08:41] I could see the person's shadow now.
[00:08:44] The glow of the fire was just enough to cast it against the tent.
[00:08:49] There was a man standing there still, his head tilted slightly to one side like he was listening for me to breathe.
[00:08:59] I waited for him to say something else. Instead he just reached out, pressed one finger into my tent.
[00:09:07] The finger withdrew and then he pressed it in again and again and again in random spots, like he was poking a dead animal to see if it would move.
[00:09:20] Go away, I said. I meant for it to come out strong, though I think it came out thin and shaky.
[00:09:28] The man didn't move.
[00:09:30] I heard him exhale.
[00:09:32] Then I heard him laugh. Not loudly, just once, a short breath through his nose.
[00:09:38] Then the footsteps moved away.
[00:09:41] There was the obvious grab my pack, leave the tent, sprint up the trail.
[00:09:47] But he was outside and he obviously knew the woods better than I did.
[00:09:54] If he wanted me outside the tent, running seemed like the worst thing I could do.
[00:09:59] So I stayed put. I stayed inside a thin nylon bag while a stranger walked around in the dark.
[00:10:06] I didn't sleep much the rest of the night. I sat with my back pressed into the corner of the tent and the knife in my hand.
[00:10:15] At some point, maybe around 2 in the morning, the zipper to my tent moved. Just a little zip. I lunged forward and grabbed it from the inside. Don't, I said. Zipper tugged against my finger. Not hard, just playful.
[00:10:30] Like somebody was testing me.
[00:10:32] I held it shut with both hands. For a while, neither I nor whoever this was moved.
[00:10:38] Then he let go and his footsteps retreated again.
[00:10:42] I started crying quietly, trying not to embarrass myself. Then I heard something heavy dragging across the ground outside.
[00:10:51] I heard it scrape through the leaves.
[00:10:54] I didn't know what it was until it hit the tent pole.
[00:10:58] Clack. He was tapping a branch against the tent frame, testing it. I imagined him out there with a thick stick, figuring out how easily he could collapse the whole thing on top of me.
[00:11:10] Please just stop.
[00:11:12] Then, after one last tap, I heard him say, that's better.
[00:11:17] I'd never forgotten the way he said that to me, like he had been waiting all night for me to beg.
[00:11:23] Sometime after 3, the fire went out completely. And when it did, this shadow or this man disappeared with it.
[00:11:32] The next morning, I woke up and walked outside the tent.
[00:11:37] The crazy thing is, there was no boot prints, no giant stick, no pebbles even next to the tent. It was as if I had imagined the whole thing for a long time. I told myself that there had to be an explanation, a prank, a person, some deranged local who knew the area and liked scaring people.
[00:12:01] But last spring, I ran into a guy at an outdoor store wearing a shirt for the pines, which I thought was odd because, like I said, it wasn't an official campsite.
[00:12:13] I asked him if he camped there.
[00:12:15] He got quiet and said, yeah, have you?
[00:12:20] I told him about the creek, the flat patch and the stone fire ring.
[00:12:24] When he looked at me with a smirk, he didn't laugh, but he just said, oh, that's Roger's spot.
[00:12:34] He told me people used to camp there all the time back in the day, before the logging road was washed out.
[00:12:41] Though one night a man named Roger went out there alone, never to be seen again.
[00:12:47] He was found three days later at the bottom of the ravine next to the creek, barefoot, feet torn open, his neck broken.
[00:12:58] He said sometimes Roger is known to bother people who camp at his spot.
[00:13:04] It doesn't bother everyone, he said. Just people who acknowledge him. He told me if I had not answered his cough that I never would have had to deal with him that night.
[00:13:16] I think about this all the time because what if I didn't answer?
[00:13:21] Now I'll never go back to the hollowed camp. But every time I do camp now, I listen to my surroundings, and sometimes I think I still hear a cough, though I never acknowledge it anymore.
[00:13:35] Thank you for allowing me to share your story.
[00:13:38] This was quite an interesting one to me.
[00:13:41] When I first came across this email, I honestly thought this was going to be a Bigfoot encounter. The twigs, the pebbles being thrown at the tent. But the more I read it, the more it intrigued me. It's very rare that you find a crossover into the paranormal for these kinds of stories.
[00:14:00] Typically they're more Cryptid.
[00:14:02] And while I've never fully been camping myself, I don't know if this story is helping me figure out if I want to go camp or not.
[00:14:12] But with that, I have no show announcements this week. But if to anyone listening, if you'd like to support the show and gain access to our monthly bonus episodes, head over to patreon.com do you want to hear Ghost Story? But as always, I am just glad to have you all as campers on this journey. Please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you're just trying to scare. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a review. I would love to hear from you. Until next time.
