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I had a conversation the other day and someone asked me if I would rather be stranded in a sketchy inner-city neighborhood or in the middle of nowhere.
I immediately gave my answer: give me the city!
Because I’m afraid of the creepiness of isolated places with not too many people around.
Let’s see what folks on AskReddit said about the creepy and unexplained things they’ve seen in rural areas.
1. Out in the field.
“I work quite a bit in rural parts of the U.S. I used to work as a Field Archaeologist and we would run across odd things out in the middle of nowhere or up on the top of a mountain or deep in a forest of swamp.
Once when doing high altitude survey work in the mountains of Colorado, we were in the middle of an alpine forest–there were 3 of us, each with their own survey line to follow parallel to one another–every 50 meters we would dig a 50 cm x 50 cm hole and use are hand screen to screen the dirt. We would then record on a form the soil type, any artifacts, and so on. We would do this for miles and miles for 10 hours a day–the real life of an archaeologist.
So, I was on the far right survey line and we were climbing over boulders and through trees uphill toward the ridgeline. I dropped down off of a boulder into an small opening in the boulder field and there was an old tree that had symbols carved in the bark that I could tell had been re-carved repeatedly, there was a small, but a distinct stone circle that went around the base of the tree.
There were what looked like Wiccan-type wooden figures made from small twigs twisted together and what looked like small wooden offering bowls with food and dark liquid in them. I called my survey partners over to the tree. We took photos and recorded it on a cultural site form, though it was modern. The site kind of gave me the willies since there were animal bones included in the shrine or whatever it was.”
2. Creepy.
“I used to own five acres of land with a cow field as my only neighbors on all sides. I’ve always sang these really silly songs to my pups. One is the nursery rhyme “daisy, daisy”. I sing the songs inside my house mostly, because my dogs are indoor dogs.
Anyway, one crisp fall evening I was inside my house alone with my windows open. I heard a faint, low whistle. It was the “daisy, daisy” tune, whistled slowly and deliberately. At the end of the verse, the whistling stopped. I was too scared to look outside. I’ll never know what caused that noise.”
3. Missing time.
“When I was in college I was coming home from work around midnight. I lived in a SUPER rural area and my car at the time had a large moon roof.
I pull up to a stop sign about a mile outside of my town. Only corn fields and soybeans surrounding me. Out of no where this INSANE bright light comes down on top of my car. Like so bright I cannot see where it’s coming from when I look up.
We have had Samaritan helicopters that have flown over our house with these bright spot lights before looking for a safe place to land when there was a car accident far from town and lots of snow all over so I am looking up and trying to see if I can see the helicopter above me but this light is so bright I can’t see anything.
I remember very slowly starting to make the turn from the stop sign towards town when the light took off super fast ahead of me, expanded (I can only describe this as like some thing you would see in a space movie idk), and then disappeared.
The next thing I knew I was crossing the bridge into town which was about a mile away from where I last remembered being.”
4. The figure.
“A few months ago I was in my recliner, trying to sleep.
My eyes popped open, only to see a solid black figure standing just off the corner of the chair. It bent over at the waist and turned its neck funny. It was like it was trying to get a good look at me at eye level. I panicked a bit and all I could do was yell, “What what WHAT!” And it disappeared.
Part of me thought I must have been dreaming. But then I realized that my German Shepherd was hiding underneath the foot of the recliner, something he had never done in his 6 years. He did that for the next few weeks.”
5. Whoa.
“I was a live in care taker for a 94 year old women with Alzheimer’s for about a year and half.
She had moved into her daughters home deep in the woods of middle of nowhere Washington. Marie was prone to say weird things, like that her sister(deceased), mother (deceased), and husband (deceased) were in the house or outside regularly. I had been working with dementia patients for a few years by this point so it never bothered me. Marie was terrified of the woods.
She would tell me about how there’s dangerous animals out there and I could get lost easily so I must always stay inside. She was also worried about her mother, and husband having to travel through them. Again, this wasn’t worrisome behavior given her health condition. I had been working with her for about 6 or 7 months when I would start waking up to her walking down the halls in the middle of the night.
Sun downing is fairly normal for people with Alzheimer’s so again I wasn’t troubled by this, but she started going to a specific window and giggling. Like she was interacting with someone outside the window. When asked what she was doing she’d say my mother is out there. Kind of weird, but there’s a different perception in her world now. One night in d**d of winter her daughter and I are awoken to the blaring of the houses alarm system.
The daughter and I checked the doors and windows, none of which seem to be disturbed or unlocked. The only thing missing is Marie. She is nowhere in the house. Panicked, I rush outside to find her while the daughter continues to search the house. No tracks anywhere, no disturbed snow, nothing. After 10-15 minutes of yelling/searching the woods I start making my way back to house where her daughter was already in the process of calling 911.
As I reproach the house I see Marie. Standing outside the window she normally stood at giggling. There’s not a single footstep in the snow around her, nor is she cold to the touch. She’s just standing there laughing at nothing, didn’t even know she was outside. Her late night window visits became more frequent after this, but less happy.
She’d get combative with the window and scream at who ever she believed to be there. Then it just stopped one day. One of the last conversations I had with Marie before she passed she told me to “not let them take me into those woods”. I hope they didn’t.”
6. Pure terror.
“I grew up in the countryside in Italy.
One night I was going to my room when I stopped at the threshold of my door and couldn’t get myself to go in. I was frozen and had this feeling of terror. My heart was racing, I felt like hyperventilating but I knew o had to keep my breath quiet. Just this feeling of pure terror.
I ran downstairs and drank some water or something and watched some tv with my parents. After a while I tried to go back to my room and the feeling was gone. I don’t know what could have caused it, I never had that problem before.”
7. The cemetery.
“Growing up in rural Ohio I lived on a stone road. I used to take the country roads to the closest town which passed an old cemetery in the middle of a wooded swamp.
I used to pass there every day on my paper route as a kid in the 80s. Way in the back of the small cemetery was an old Washington monument shaped grave that was broke at the base. The top section was a few feet away from the base. Everyday I would lift that top section back on to its base and go ride do my route.
The next day without fail the top section would be in exactly the same place. I did this everyday for about 2 years. One day I looked at where the top section was laying and I saw a very small glint of white marble poking through the ground. I moved the grass away and the dirt away and uncovered a small grave of a d**d infant that matched the same last name as the name on the grave. I never lifted the top section ever again.
Every time I go visit home which is now a couple thousand miles away I go back to that cemetery and that top section is still laying on top of that infant grave.”
8. Like a Stephen King book.
“I lived and worked in the southern coastal town of Albany in Western Australia for a number of years where my job required me to travel to various rural communities around the region.
I was returning home along a very flat and long stretch of Albany Highway in the afternoon when I had to overtake a farmer in his old ute ( Australian for pickup truck ).
So far so very typical of travelling along your average country road but as I pulled in ahead of him I checked my rear view mirror as I always did and even though this happened over twenty five years ago, I can still vividly recall the absolute confusion when I saw there was no car behind me on the road at all.
This wasn’t at night but about 1.00pm in the afternoon, there was no sun in my eyes or shadows on the road or any roads he could’ve suddenly turned down.
I was easily going around 110 kms an hour which meant he was going about 90-100kms.
I literally looked up into the rear vision mirror as I pulled into the correct lane so I cannot believe he could’ve slowed down and turned into a side road at that speed, or without me seeing him.
No trees, flat paddocks both sides.
I’m still absolutely flummoxed to this day as to what happened, even as I’m typing this I’m pretty creeped out remembering how it affected me.
It really was like something out of a Stephen King novel.
This is the first time I have recalled this story since it happened, weird and bloody creepy but true.”
9. Whistling.
“I live in the middle of nowhere, with very few houses beside me. I’m lucky in the sense that a good friend of mine lives a kilometer down this narrow gravel road. One evening I called down to him, we had the chats and played some Xbox. I left at 12am, pitch black down this narrow road, and absolute silence.
So I began to whistle, and that’s when they whistled back. I whistled again. My tune was repeated. This went on for 2/3 minutes, the whistles got louder and louder, but still no footsteps. Eventually my neighbour drove past and offered me a lift home.
I laughed assuming it was her who had been whistling, possibly only now returning to her car after a walk, but she had no idea who it was, nor did she see anyone on the road on her way.”
10. Don’t go alone.
“I sleep with the windows open sometimes in winter, because I’m about 3 stories up from the ground. You can hear the deer walking through at night, because they mostly travel at night where I live. It was pretty scary at first, but over the years I got used to it.
One night something sounded different. There were the deer, but there was something else in the leaves that was fast as f**k. There was the alarm snort, then some thuds, then they all started barking and running. Then there were some dragging and snorting noises. I had sweaty palms under my blanket and was terrified to move. Some time after it stopped I closed the windows and went to sleep.
Next morning there wasn’t much to see but some fresh dirt, but I learned some lessons that night. If you go out in the woods, bring a lamp and a g**. If you go, don’t go alone.”
11. Meanwhile, in Kansas.
“I grew up in rural southeast Kansas.
When my friends and I were young, ages ~10-14, we went out to a shallow creek/small forest about a mile from my best friend’s house. At night. We had a few pellet/BB g**s and maybe a knife between us for shenanigans, that’s about it.
After a few minutes of walking in the woods we all felt incredibly… watched. Something was following us, but none of us could get a bead on it. Some sort of dread from our monke instincts overtook the group and we drew in close and faced outward in all directions.
We hauled a** out of the forest and back into the tallgrass prairie that led to the house. I looked back at the treeline and believe I saw a mountain lion tail disappearing into a bush. I told my friends to stay CLOSE and we got back home safe.
We talked to my friend’s dad, who worked in the local Parks & Rec department and knew the Fish and Game people. He said the official story is that we Do Not Have Big Cats in southeast Kansas, but there had been quiet talk of a potentially untracked male in the area.”
12. No idea what happened.
“I used to work in a state park in a rural town, and would hike in through a park trail from the town to my office regularly.
There were several routes, the trail being the longest but also the prettiest. One morning, I had enough time to take the trail from the road where the bus dropped me off. As I turned a corner in the trail, I saw a woman ahead of me jogging, which was not uncommon on this trail. I looked down at my phone while walking, expecting to feel her pass by me, but when I looked up a few seconds later, she had disappeared. She was gone.
There was no where else that she could have gone without making a lot of noise in brambles or being visible to me where I was standing. I stood there, confused for a few seconds, and looked around for her, thinking she had fallen, or had gone down a side trail. She was absolutely nowhere, although she did not have enough time to move so far from me that I wouldn’t have seen her in a clear area under trees.
I moved on, thinking my mind was playing tricks on me. Later down the same trail, I saw a small white fluffy dog jump out of some bushes, seemingly without an owner. I smiled at the dog and tried to get its attention as I got closer. The dog looked at me, turned and walked down the trail. As I got closer, the dog turned down an open side of the trail, which led to a space under the trees that I could see easily.
As I watched, one second the dog was there . . . and one second it wasn’t. It was not there. Nowhere to be seen. No noise. I stood there blinking in the morning light. I HAD seen a dog, hadn’t I? And what about that woman at the top of the trail? That was when I realized that neither of them had made a sound.
To this day I still cannot explain wtf happened to me that morning. A time glitch? Seeing ghosts? I have no idea.”
Do you have any stories like this?
If so, please share them with us in the comments.
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