This happened to one of my brothers on a wilderness survival excursion last year.
We were camping together at a very popular campsite in the mountains in Virginia—my brothers, me, my dad, and a few of our friends. It was somewhat of a tradition in our family to spend one night out of the week at a slightly more remote site a few miles away from base camp, where you didn’t bring a tent and had to build your own shelter then find your way back to base camp in the morning. I had done this two years ago with some friends, my older brothers each did it a few years earlier, and my dad was always super conscious of making sure we were well prepared. He just wanted us to have a good time and be “one with nature.” Y’all know what I mean.
So this year it’s my younger brother’s turn (let’s call him Dan), and he and his friend (let’s call him Ricky) are getting ready for their wilderness survival night. Of course, they’re practicing all their skills and showing off, classic Boy Scout shit like tying knots, building fires, whittling. They’re arrogant teenagers, so they’re bragging about how they’re gonna find an even more remote site than usual, and we think they’re full of shit.
The night comes that they plan to hike to their other site and they get there and set up a little lean-to all according to plan. They’ve got their fire, enough food and water to last the night, everything we prepared in advance. Then they go to sleep. At around 2 in the morning, Ricky wakes Dan up because there’s a sound like footsteps around their shelter. They’re in the Smokies, so of course their first worry is bears. But all their food is tied up in a bear bag so they think they’ll be fine.
Ricky sits up and looks out into the darkness and says he sees a guy at the tree line of the campsite. Dan looks too and also sees him. At this point they can’t tell whether to be relieved—no bear—or even more scared—no one else knows where they are except my dad with the map and the plans. So who is this guy? The two of them can’t tell what’s going on with this rando until he turns around and is carrying a fucking axe. They can’t see his face, but he’s wearing all black, swinging this axe around, and ambling toward the shelter at a really casual pace.
Now they’re thoroughly freaked, because the only weapons they brought with them are pocketknives, and no way are they gonna be able to fend off this guy with his axe. Something’s unusual about the way this guy is shuffling toward the shelter though, almost like he doesn’t see it, or doesn’t see Dan and Ricky, so they think okay let’s just keep quiet and hide and see what happens.
Guy keeps walking toward their shelter with his axe, still doesn’t see them, and stops directly in front of their fire, which is basically just coals now because it’s the middle of the night. He sits down for a few minutes and Dan and Ricky are scared shitless. They’re thinking it’s two on one, maybe they can rush him with the pocketknives and take him, but something’s stopping them from trying. Then axe guy gets up, walks over to the shelter, and looks directly at Dan through a hole between the branches in the wall. They make eye contact. Then he turns around and slowly shuffles away out of the campsite, just like how he came in.
Dan and Ricky immediately packed up their stuff and headed back to the main campsite, even though it was the middle of the night—which was really stupid, we told them. But they made it back and we never heard anything about the guy with the axe, not even from the park ranger.
Anyone know anything about cryptids or ghosts in the Smokies? We’re not from there so we have no clue who Dan and Ricky might have seen or if this is part of the ghost lore of the area. Maybe just some creep in the woods with an axe…