I will never go camping again, and I think I might even move as far away from this place as possible.
I went on a camping trip with my mates a couple of weeks ago and I will never step foot in that forest again.
We and my friends planned a camping trip. Not a hunting trip or anything, but two of my friends brought their hunting rifles and planned to go hunting for a couple of hours if they got the chance. I’d always wanted to hunt, but I’d never had the time to do a decent length trip. When I told one of my hunting friends this he told me he said he’d bring his crappy old hunting rifle for me.
We didn’t set up camp till about 6:00PM. Me and three of my friends were ready to eat and go to bed. My two hunting friends said they would eat and go out hunting. We ate and by about 7PM we were tidying up and setting up sleeping bags. We had a seven man tent, and there were five of us, so there was lots of space. I decided to stay in and go hunting next time they went out. My two hunting friends went out, and me and my two other mates stayed in the tent and talked for about two hours before going to sleep. As we were falling asleep, we heard sprinting footsteps coming towards us. We all shot up and jumped out of our sleeping bags. ‘Guys!’ It was on of our friends who went out. ‘Open the tent!’ I unzipped the tent and they practically dove in. They gulped down some water and breathed hard before getting words out. ‘We finished shooting as it got dark,’ started one of my friends, ‘John had just packed up his rifle and I was having a last scout to see if I could see anything, and I saw a deer. It had glowing red eyes, staring right down my scope. I shot and nothing happened. Then it just ran at us, so legged it’ described my friend in a panic. ‘John? Did you see it too?’ I asked John. ‘I didn’t see it until it started running at us. I didn’t see a deer form, just the red eyes coming towards us’ he replied. ‘I left my rifle there, we’ll have to go back for it tomorrow’ said my other friend. ‘We’ll all go back tomorrow’ said one of my friends who stayed in the tent.
We managed to sleep in the end, and the next morning we started walking to where they went hunting. We found my friend’s rifle in one piece. He picked it up and unloaded it. ‘Thank Christ’ he said, putting the unused bullets in his pocket. What he didn’t notice, was an engraving in the butt. ‘Look at the butt’ I said. My friend held the rifle out and looked at the butt. It was a carving of two people. One standing up with a rifle bag on his back, and one lying down still looking down his rifle scope. ‘That’s us’ said John. ‘What?’ replied my other hunting friend. ‘I can only imagine that’s what we would’ve looked like’
At about 1:00PM, John suggested we go hunting before sunset so we’re a little less on edge. We did about an hour’s hunting before coming back and spending the rest of the day and night with our friends. We had a fun night of drinking and talking before going to sleep.
Our plans for the next day were to have breakfast pack up our things and the tent, eat lunch in the forest, depending on the time we left, if we were ready too early, we’d stop somewhere on the way home. We had our tent packed up and ready to go. It was 11:30AM and we were all ready. We decided to stop somewhere on the way home to get something to eat. We began our one hour walk to the car.
We were about half way to the car when we heard a man scream in the distance. No further than 100 metres into the brush. We all stopped dead. I said we needed to go check it out, and both my hunting friends agreed. I was given the crappy hunting rifle, and we ran forward towards the scream. We reached roughly where the scream came from. There were bloody, torn clothes everywhere, but nothing else. I picked up the clothes and looked at them. We were completely spooked. I told my friends I couldn’t see anything else, and neither could they. Suddenly, we heard the very recognisable sound of our two other friends screaming. We sprinted back, shouting and crying their names, doing our best to not trip up. We made it back to the path. Our bags were strewn about everywhere. Our friends were gone. We looked around and couldn’t see anything. Nobody. We came back to the bags. We were all near tears. We sat down for about five minutes, trying to think about what to do. Again, I heard one of my disappeared friends screaming towards where we had set up camp. My eyes shot towards it. The first thing I saw was a pair of red eyes bolting directly at me. It was only a second later I realised it was a deer with red eyes. Me and my two friends bolted to the car. After about five minutes, it seemed to have disappeared. We got to the car and went back to my house to stay there for the rest of the day and the night.
We reported our friends missing and the bloody torn clothes to the police. They haven’t been found I’m beginning to think they won’t be. We also told them about the deer with red eyes. They had no idea what we were talking about and said they had never had reports about it, but there was a rapidly rising number of missing reports in that forest.