I’ve always heard stories that the woods by my parents old property was cursed or haunted. My neighbor would tell horror stories about satanic rituals taking place deep in the heart of the forest. He said when he was a kid he stumbled upon several robed gentlemen draining the blood of a baby goat into a chalice and passing it back and fourth as they chanted some foreign language. He said they had a pentagram drawn on the ground with some kind of light yellow powder. He said he barely got away and wouldn’t share all the details. I thought he was stupid and that he was trying to scare me and didn’t think twice about playing in the woods even at night.
One weekend I had a friend Tj over, my parents recently bought a big three room tent. We thought it would be a cool idea to sleep out in the tent for a couple nights and camp out. So we set up the tent and my dad helped us set up a small fire pit before he went inside for the night. He said “I’ll light it once but when it goes out, it’s out for the night”. So we agreed and he started the fire then headed inside. Me and Tj sat around the fire we made Smores and told ghost stories until we where ready for bed.
We crawled into the tent and got comfy in our sleeping bags. We talked for a while at least a couple hours about life and girls. Once it hit midnight we felt pretty sleepy and decided to finally go to bed. We both said goodnight to each other and before we could go to sleep we heard a crackle in the leaves it sounded like a group of foot steps surrounding the tent. Tj whispered “can you hear that” I replied “yeah it’s probably raccoons or deer”. We listened quietly as it got closer and closer. We where scared out of our witts what if it was a group of wild coyotes or something just waiting to gnaw off our faces?
As the sounds got even closer to the tent we started hearing quiet raspy moaning. Like an old man struggling to breath. We then seen a silhouette of a human like shape shadow over the tent I was scared out of my mind. I thought it was my dad playing a trick on us but it’s 1:00 AM there’s no way he’s up, he’s got to get up for work at 6:00 and that man loves his sleep. We laid quietly still and listened in horror as the sounds persisted for at least one hour. Every 10 minutes something would shake the tent and growl and hiss at us. It wasn’t like an animal hissing either it sounded like a demonic human cursing us trying to figure out how to open the tent for an easy meal.
Then after what seemed like an eternity we heard the sound of feet shuffling away slowly staggering across the leaves. We quietly and slowly unzipped a small section of the tent window to try and peak out and see what’s out there. But all we could see is a faint shadow of what looked like a hunched over old man creeping away from the tent. We wrote it off as it being some kind of animal interested in the food trash we left outside or at least we hoped so. We where too scared to leave the tent to go in the house so we decided to ride it out through the night and try to get some sleep.
It was about 3:00 AM then we heard the noise of leaves shuffling again and the strange moaning sound this time louder like it’s agitated. It got closer and closer to the tent me and Tj looked at each other like “oh no it’s back again”. It started shaking the tent again this time it muttered under its breath “I… Smell… Children… They… Must die.” We sat there in shock, waiting silently for it to leave. But this time it didn’t.
The zipper from the hatch slowly opened and an old wrinkly rotted hand slowly reached in. There was something in its fingers. It was round and slimy it almost looked like an eyeball I squinted my eyes to get a better look and it was an eyeball looking directly at me. It muttered “Children” as it frantically tried ripping open the tent. I didn’t know what to do so I screamed “leave us alone.” It yelled back “You are the cancer of this forest you must die!!!” I reached for my flash light I shined it at its face it was old, decaying and withered it looked ancient and evil. It hissed and screamed from the light like it hurt it or something. So I continued to hold it on its face as it screamed and thrashed frantically. It fell back holding its face in agony. It screamed “You will die, I’ll eat your fingers and toes and drink your blood. I’ll crush your eyeballs in my teeth like grapes”. We jumped out of the tent and ran towards the house. We could hear it thrashing through the leaves and chasing us. I looked back and I could see the withered old man hunced over and running towards us full speed on all fours.
We finally made it to the door of my house and hurry up and made it inside. We glared out the window as the monster got closer and closer. It finally got to the door and it started furiously scratching and digging at it trying to get it open. I then remembered we had a big porch light that would surely scare it off. I hurry up and turned on the switch and it screamed in pain as the light burned its skin. As it was holding it’s face from the pain it screamed it a demonic voice “Don’t ever come out at night again I will eat you alive”!!! As it staggered back into the darkness of the woods.
Me and Tj looked at each other in shock wondering what just happened. We could never explain that night, we never told anybody what happened. Let’s just say I stayed inside at night from then on. Once in a while whenever I peak outside from my window at night before bed I can see the old withered man watching me from the darkness just waiting to eat me alive.