Horror Stories

Out In Woods

When I was a child, it was just me and my mother. We lived in a property owned by my grandma, a three story, old farmhouse right at the fringe of the woods. It was far off the road, down a long, unlit, gravel driveway―it felt very isolated at night, being so distant from any other houses, set in an area that hadn't been inhabited for thirty years before we started living in it. Quite often, I was a fairly rambunctious child, so while my mom went off to work, I would occasionally skip the morning bus to school and stay home alone all day. The big house had a habit of feeling incredibly lonely and sparse, so I spent most of my time playing in the forest expanse out back. Some distance into the woods, far enough that I couldn't hear my mother when she called, there was a toppled pine tree which had crashed into another―an even larger trunk on its way down was now frozen there, forming a long arc over the forest floor. I loved to climb up the jagged stump at the base of this fallen tree and then steady myself to a point just above the middle. I was never able to make it all the way to the top because it just got too steep for me to continue any further, and I had a bad habit of freaking out from how high up I was.

One day I was sitting in my usual spot on the fallen tree, which was a good distance from the ground, just listening to the birds singing and simultaneously feeling the warmth of the sun on my neck, when I heard something strange from underneath that paralyzed me in shock:

"Hey kid."

I was gripped by a sudden strong surge of fear for a moment. The voice had come from directly underneath me. I strained to look down, but couldn't see anything over the ledge. For a long time I just sat there in absolute silence, and I was at the point where I was almost soon to convince myself that I had imagined hearing a man's voice at all.

"I know you can hear me."

His voice was much louder this time, as I yelled something out, and scrambled up the log a bit higher. Trembling nervously, I dug my fingernails into the bark and held tight for dear life. I sat there, trying to collect my nerves for god knows how long. Although I couldn't see it, the presence of the thing underneath me was still clear. The bird song was much softer and more cautious this time, and when I listened closely, I swear I could hear the faintest echo of human breathing. Gathering all my courage, I vowed to prove to myself that it was all my imagination by leaning over the ledge as far as I possibly could without slipping right off. Digging hard into the bark behind me, I stretched out along my arms and peered over, getting a full view of the empty forest floor and undergrowth, when suddenly―

"―COME DOWN HERE OR I'LL COME UP AND GRAB YOU!"

It was so loud, it was as if it was being screamed right in my face. I released my grip on the tree in fright and plunged off the platform. I was saved only by grabbing a nearby branch, and for one awful second, my bare legs dangled in the cool air. When I pulled myself up, I ran at full speed to the top of the collapsed pine, to the point I had never reached before. I sat there, just below the rustling canopy, pissing myself and staring at the distant base where the splintered wood rose, fully expecting at any moment to see someone crawling rapidly up the pine towards me. Instead, all I heard was the wind whistling in the leaves above and below me, and occasional snippets of birdsong. It was about two hours before my mother got home and found me, after much worried searching, trembling, and crying at the top of the fallen tree.

Although this incident spooked both me and mother, in time I somehow recovered, exhibiting that naive hard skin of a child, although I never went as far into the forest as I used to, and never again even approached that fallen tree. Once when I was twelve, I had the chore of taking firewood from the shed out back (just at the edge of the woods) and to bring it back inside the house. It was a tiresome job, and I always chose to do it at dusk when the air was brimming with mosquitoes and a swampy fog that usually coated the lawn. By the time I had made my last round, I would sprint back to the house, spooked. One of my least favourite things about this job was that the shed was full of barn owls (if you have ever seen a barn owl's face staring at you from a dark roof corner, then you will know how uncomfortable that shed made me).