I grew up in a very small mountain town of less than a thousand people. We had many creepy stories children shared around, some silly like a creepy snake monster in the school toilet, and some with more history to them, like skinwalkers. In fact, the town is very close to the navajo reservation and navajo ruins. I had a native friend in middle school who told me one was after her, she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone but she was so scared she ended up telling some of her friends. She’s fine now in case anyone is worried.
This story is a bit in between those two in terms of legitimacy, but it was weird. In middle and elementary school it was common for kids to go to the high school football games, as there wasn’t much else to do.
The football field was surrounded by woods, and kids had a story about a witch that lived in them. You supposedly were not allowed in the woods because it was someone else’s property, but there wasn’t anything there like a house, and we never were told who lives there, so of course kids went in anyways.
If you walked into the woods a bit you could find an area the witch supposedly went sometimes . It was a semi cleared out area in the field of trees, far enough in that you couldn’t see the football field through the trees, but could easily find your way back. There’s an old decrepit shed there, borderline falling into a ditch, and many broken glass bottles laying around, but that’s it.
This particular day my parents dragged me to the game, and another kid and I decided to go into the woods to cure our boredom. We waited till the game got busy and no one was looking, then headed into the trees. There was somewhat of a path, but we still needed to duck under and push branches out of the way the whole walk.
When we reached the clearing, there was still the same old building falling apart and shards of glass, but a few other things I hadn’t seen before in the times I went there. First off, there were some childrens school chairs, the cheap plastic kind, in different colors, and some were sun-bleached. They sat in a circle in the middle of the clearing. Then, there were a few socks, from like a baby or toddler, somewhat similar sizes but clearly all from a different pair, and they just lay scattered on the ground.
All this was weird, but still fun spooky things, so we looked around a bit longer. That’s when we found an old ax on the ground. Very old looking, like I dont think its useful for cutting wood anymore, kind of old. Then there was some dried blood on it… or paint? I hope it was paint… Either way it freaked us out, and we left.
You’d think that’d be the end of it, but no, apparently we felt the urge to go right back in there. This time, we took a slightly different path. On the way in we found a cat… it was dead. I couldn’t tell the color, it was like I had on night vision goggles, but everything was a different shade of tan/orange instead of green. It layed there with its mouth wide open, like it was screaming at us, and despite being dead its eyes were even more bright and reflective then most living cats. They were open as wide as possible, and just staring, looking both terrified and terrifying. There was no evidence of its cause of death, no visible injuries, and it didn’t look especially old. It didn’t even have a smell.
We just left then, and I never returned to those woods. I still wonder what was going on there though, maybe I should go back.