There’s a story I have been wanting to tell for a while now. This is a tale that I have always been interested in telling, but I’ve never been able to find the right person or place to share it with. It wasn’t until recently that I learned about the existence of this forum through a close friend who was talking about it. By looking at what gets posted, lots of people have weird and unexplainable stories of their own, so, I feel this is the perfect place to talk about it
I grew up and currently live in a small town in Pennsylvania. It’s the type of town that’s small enough to the point where everyone knows practically everybody. The town itself was never that interesting, only having a few places worth checking out such as these great Chinese and Mexican restaurants. Other than that, the only noteworthy thing about the town was that it was surrounded by a huge, dense forest. When I say that the forest is huge, I mean it. You could travel almost an hour out of town before you make it out of the woods
The forest was also a very popular area to play in when I was a kid. Many of the kids in my neighborhood would always travel there to have stick fights and build forts. I remember that my friends and I would always go to a small stream located in the depths of the forest. We would always have belly flop competitions and try to splash each other with water every time. Not to mention the countless times we would come across a cave that was built into the side of a small cliff and we would try to dare each other to go inside them.
When I was, I believe about 9 years old, my friends and I wanted to build a small wooden fort we could hang out in inside the forest. After a few weeks of each of us getting the resources we needed, all 4 of us set off into the valley of trees in order to accomplish our goal. We spent about half an hour trying to find a spot that was flat enough to hold the foundation of our fort. Sadly, every area we discovered either wasn’t flat enough to our liking, or there was some kind of drawback to it.
A vivid memory I have was when we finally came across a perfectly flat patch of land we could use. We had just put down our materials, when there was a loud rustling sound in some nearby bushes. Being kids, our minds immediately assumed there was some rapid animal hiding in them. Because of this, none of us wanted to go anywhere near the bushes. But we realized that if we wanted to build our fort in peace, we were going to have to drive out whatever was in the bushes. We all decided on playing rock paper scissors to figure out who would be the one to check them out. Unfortunately, it was me. When we finished the game, I picked up a nearby stick and slowly walked to the bush, which was still making rustling noises. I carefully and slowly reached my arm out with the stick, trying to poke out whatever was in there. I remember how my heart was beating at what felt like a thousand beats per second. I then finally thrust the stick into the noisy bush. When I did, a raccoon immediately jumped out in front of me, scaring me half to death. I luckily jumped out of the way before it could scratch at my weak and mentally recovering body. The raccoon went to another bush across from the one I had just got it out from. We all knew that we probably weren’t going to get the raccoon away from the area, and we all knew we didn’t want to share our fort with it either. We then went off with our supplies to find a better spot.
Luckily, we did. It was another flat area of land, however, unlike the last one, this area was next to a small stream. We all immediately knew this was where we wanted to build our fort. After putting down our materials, we checked to make sure there weren’t any unwanted critters nearby. Thankfully, the area was clear, and we began construction on our fort. Neither of us anticipated how long it would take to finish the foundations. We all knew that it would take a bit, but never to the length that it actually was. It wasn’t until the late evening when we finished up most of the crude foundation and supports. We were all tired and gathered up everything from the area.
On our way back however, I started to grow a faint feeling of terror. I didn’t know what it was, but there was just something that was starting to bother me. The dark orange sky, and the tall and shadowy trees gave off an unsettling vibe to me. Not to mention the constant crunching of leaves, from both my friends and I, as well as from animals in the distance. Everything added up to me being more sacred than usual in the woods. But that wasn’t the scariest part of the night. As we walked through the woods, a noise blasted and echoed through the tree line. When I first heard it, I immediately froze. The darkened palette of the woods already put me on edge, but the loud noise just about gave me something to have nightmares about. I slowly turned to look at my friends, still frozen with fear. All of them had the same expression, a look of confusion and terror. It didn’t take much longer for the noise to stop. When it did, we all knew we had to get out of the forest as soon as possible. We bolted our way through the valley of trees and dirt, and as we did, I pondered about the noise that we all just heard. The noise was very high pitched, similar to a noise someone would make if they screamed out of fear. Was the noise we heard someone screaming?
We eventually made it out of the forest and we all safely returned home. I still remember being worried for my life from the noise in the woods, something as simple as a quick, what I assumed was a scream, frightened me deeply. I tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for why the scream happened, and I eventually came to the conclusion that maybe another kid was just screaming as a prank or scare for their friends. Maybe we had just overheard them. I went to sleep that night, hoping I would never hear that noise again.
But the screams never stopped. Every once in a while, you can hear one coming out of the woods in that loud and echoey tone that they all have. No one has ever figured out why they occur, even the police couldn’t find the source, even though they have wandered through the forest countless times. Nowadays, most people in town just ignore them, the screams are seen as nothing more than just a mere quirk the town has.
Anyways, I hope this story interests anyone who comes across this post. Feel free to share this story with anyone else that might find interest in it.