True Horror Stories

Creepy Encounters in the Pennsylvania Woods

Reddit User: ironbucket  

My friends and I back in college would not necessarily call ourselves "ghost hunters", but we liked to go out into the woods at night and find old abandoned houses, graveyards, and the like which are plentiful when you live in the middle of nowhere. A common place for us to go was a park which is very far into the woods and had an old covered bridge that was supposedly "haunted."

As an explanation as to why this bridge seems so scary, there is a light at the end of the bridge and the shadows of the trees form what looks like a figure. When you sit in the middle of the bridge the wind makes the figure look like it is moving toward you. To the unsuspecting visitor, this can be a frightening experience, so we liked to take our friends here to freak them out.

To set the scene, it was late summer on a Wednesday night, probably around 2am. We were all on summer break and had nothing going on so we decided to take a couple people down to the bridge to give them a good scare. This area is not easy to get to, there are a lot of steep hills and rocky roads it is very secluded, so as expected there were no other cars on the road.

We got down to the bridge as we had so many other times before, it was tough to see the light at the end, but there were definitely plenty of shadows around so the scare factor was still pretty high. So as you are supposed to, we parked our car in the middle of the covered bridge and turned our lights off as well as our engine. Immediately the people we brought with us saw the "shadow figure" approaching our car. We obviously tried to play it up and act like we saw it coming toward us as well to continue to scare them, but something was all wrong this time..

The figure seemed a lot more lifelike, not like a tree swaying in the wind. It didn't feel like an illusion at all. I looked over at my friends and could tell they noticed something was different this time too. It was at that point that I noticed that we were no longer looking at the same shadow figure at the end of the bridge. This one had actually moved directly in front of our car. In a panic I turned on the headlights because it was becoming a bit too real.

Once the lights came on, the figure did not disappear and it did not stop inching toward our car. There, in front of our car, was a person in an all black hoodie and all black pants. Hoodie over his head looking down at the ground. After the lights came on he kept inching toward the car at a snails pace.

A prank I thought. Someone saw us come down and was familiar with the story and wanted to mess with us. We opened our windows and yelled "Hey you got us, that's pretty good." He had no reaction. Thinking he was just trying to stay in character we laughed it off and backed out of the bridge and started heading back up the hill.

There was a parking lot up at the top of the hill, still pretty deep into the woods. maybe a minute or two drive from the bridge. We decided to head up that way to gather our thoughts and sort of process everything that had just happened since adrenaline was still running pretty high.

We got to the parking lot, which is normally about a quarter full on a busy weekend during midday with hikers as it is a pretty popular hiking spot in the area, but 2am on a Wednesday should have this lot totally empty. Upon pulling in, every spot was full. Considering the park closed at dusk, this was a disturbing discovery. We parked in the middle of the lot trying to figure out what was going on. I grew up just minutes from this area and the amount of cars in the lot was probably the equivalent of the nearest towns entire population.

We sat in the lot for about 5-10 minutes just talking to each other trying to figure out what was going on when two German Shepherds came running down the hill, they stopped at our car briefly, and then continued running off into the woods.

The girl that we had brought with us had a look of horror on her face and told us that we needed to leave. Confused and still a bit concerned, I agreed and left the area quickly. 

She put everything together. She said that cult activity in the area around us was very high, German Shepherds are commonly an animal they use for sacrifices. I do not know where she got this information, but all I know is that it has been about 5 years, I never saw her again and I never went back to that bridge at night again.

_____________________________________________________

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

Have any of your own horror stories to share? Anything from stalkers to ghosts, let me know in the comments and you're story will be featured in this book.