This story took place about 4 months ago and still makes me uneasy when I think about it. To preface, I am a person who will pick up new hobbies and put forth a solid effort in staying with them. Most don’t end up sticking, like playing guitar, archery, and more. One of these attempted hobbies was hiking. Not in any serious capacity or anything like that. Just going on trails in state parks for a few hours. At least this was my plan to get started.
I had picked out a nice Saturday with good forecast weather. I packed a bag with some small snacks, a larger knife, flashlight, para cord, a lighter, and some other things. Just to be prepared for a worst case scenario. I wasn’t particularly scared but was somewhat mindful of potential dangers. In addition to this I brought my CCW, a Glock 43x in an appendix carry holster, which follows all legalities in my state as I am licensed to do so. I felt fairly excited and confident it would go well. In addition to my firearm I am a decently large and strong guy, so as mentioned before there was no real fear of anything.
I set out on the drive. The state park was about 50 minutes away from where I live and I got there at about 3:00 PM. It was a gorgeous day. I started walking into the park. To clarify the park is fairly large at about ~15,000 acres. I was walking through on the trails genuinely enjoying my time, talking with some incredibly polite people I ran into, and taking an absurd amount of photos. Once a few hours had passed and I was fairly deep into the park I was overcome with the intense need to piss like a racehorse. This is where I made, the rookie mistake of going too far off trail. By the time I finished my piss i turned around and could not spot the trail I was on.
A bit of panic began to set in and I started to walk frantically in different directions only making me more lost. I then calmed down after a few minutes of this and grabbed my phone to try and either open the maps app or call someone. As my luck had it, I had no service. I decided to look for a fairly high point in elevation in the park to try and get some cell service to figure out where I was. I walked and walked and it got dark sooner rather than later. At this point I had no service and began to get a bit paranoid. I would start noticing more sounds of the woods, animals in the vegetation, twigs breaking. The darker it got I started to see small glimpses of things out of the corner of my eye. Looking and nothing being there. Shortly following this trees in the distance began looking almost like people. Needless to say I always had my firearm in mind out, but didn’t want to walk with it out.
Once a certain point had passed I saw another tree/person optical illusion but this one looked much more vivid. I stopped walking and crouched slightly to get a better look. I was incredibly off trail and had no idea what another person would be doing this far off trail. As my eyes focused I saw the outline of a person just standing there, swaying slightly. I was sure it was a person. All black, no distinctive features, no backpack, no hat. After staring for a few minutes to my fear it walked off into the deeper woods, again with no visible features. I sat there waiting before continuing to move. Maybe it was a person, maybe they knew where the trail was or we were close to it.
I kept slowly walking, as attentive as ever before hearing a voice call my name. I was so excited, maybe someone had noticed I wasn’t back and alerted park rangers. I yelled “i’m here i’m here!” And waited. The voice called out again, i looked around with my flashlight hoping to show my location, even pointing it upwards as some light signal in the sky. I didn’t see anyone, the voice didn’t get closer or further away. Just dead dark woods with a voice calling my name. I walked into what I figured the direction of the voice was. I walked and walked until I saw it again. That same black outlined figure, i shined my flashlight on it which revealed nothing. No features, no evident skin, just a pitch black outline standing in the woods. A real and vivid outline. I had my flashlight on it. I could see it had depth and weight to it. I turned and ran as fast as I could. I didn’t even think to get closer to it. I ran far and fast with my gun in hand, not daring to look back. I don’t know how long I ran but I did eventually get back on trail and thankfully happened to spot a park ranger on a mountain bike. I re holstered my weapon before yelling to get his attention, I was so unbelievably happy to see him.
He escorted me back to their office. I had given him my info and explained what happened. Including the black outline I saw. He didn’t seem to acknowledge it other than giving me a glance at my mentioning of it. Told me I was lucky I found him and didn’t have to spend the whole night in the woods. He then escorted me back to where my car was and I drove home. I have not been in the woods since.