I never believed in the paranormal until today.
My best friend is a practicing witch. He reads tarot, collects crystals, and tells the most horrific stories. I never believe them, although sometimes they do make me per my pants a bit. Anyways, he asked me to go to the nearby town to look for animal bones, and I agreed to go because I collect bones. The town is about 3 miles away from my house, but it has a population of only about 200 people. There’s fields and sparse forest, but very few homes.
I put my car into park, and grabbed my keys and phone. I always park in the same place when I come here. I know the land like the back of my hand, so I’m not scared of getting lost up here. We stepped out of the car, and started walking up the dirt trail. We turned off of it and into the forest about 10 feet into the forest, examining the land for any animal remains or bones. There was nothing. Jake turned to me and told me that we should leave before dark hit, because he never goes into the woods at night. I agreed and kept walking.
We must have walked for about an hour and a half, examining the ground every step. Nothing. No animal bones, dropping, or even animal sounds. Usually I see jackrabbits and little field mice when I come out here, and I usually find at least one bone. The sun was slowly dropping behind the mountain, and we decided to turn back towards the car. I started leading us back to the car, weaving through the sparse trees. It was a beautiful night, just very quiet. I felt my stomach turn. We walked for about 20 minutes before I realized that we were lost. I turned on my phone flashlight, because I kept tripping over short bushes and trees. We walked pretty far, but not nearly enough to go as far as I had gone before. I kept walking, while Jake started freaking out behind me. He had turned on his flashlight and went on and on about how many things could kill you in the forest after dark.
I saw a weird figure in the distance, and I figured it must be a shack. Curiosity got the best of me, and I started walking towards it. As we approached, I saw branches jutting out in every direction. We got up to the figure, and we realized that it was a mutilated tree. The trunk seemed to have been splintered into about 10 different pieces. I said that it must have been lightning, but Jake pointed out that there would be burn marks. There was no burn marks anywhere. It even seemed to still be alive. It just looked like a dinosaur had stepped on it.
We took a couple of pictures, and turned in the opposite direction. It was pitch black by now. I stepped on something squishy, and shined my flashlight down. Under my combat boot laid a freshly killed rat, the first sign of animal life we had seen that evening. Jake started freaking out even more, and we started speed walking out of the forest. He even held my hand, and I don’t blame him. The final straw came when we heard a mix between a roar and a scream. Now I’ve heard many of animal sounds in my life, Mountain lion, cougar, you name it. But this sound was unnatural. We kept going. Jake stopped for a second and I turned to face him. I asked why he stopped. He nervously told me that his flashlight on his phone wouldn’t turn on. The rest of the features worked fine, but the flashlight just wouldn’t turn on. He put away his phone and we kept walking.
We kept seeing shadows run past out of the corner of our eyes, footsteps crunching behind us, and I swore I heard something say my name. That’s where I started freaking out. We finally made it out onto a road, and we were about quarter mile past the car. We had walked all the way past the car. We walked back and quickly got in and locked the doors. I sped out of the forest. As soon as we were on the forest, Jake’a flashlight started working again.
When I got home, I posted pictures of the tree and this same story I’m telling you now on a Facebook page dedicated to Utah Paranormal activity. I got over 100 responses. Everyone agreed that the tree was unnatural, but that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was the stories of other people who had been there. Several people said that there was cult activity, and one guy said that there was actually a serial killer there about 30 years ago. Killed a bunch of people, and not all the bodies had been found. Buried the bodies in the forest. And of course, many people referenced the many inhuman things that had been encountered in our area, including not deer and skinwalkers. I was horrified.
I don’t really know what was stalking us through the forest that night. I hope it was just a cult, because I don’t even want to imagine what else could have been after us that night. Needless to say, I won’t be going back to that town after dark, or at all for that matter. So the next time you go into the forest, don’t get caught after dark. Something might follow you home.