Search and Rescue - Sometimes, a body is found and comes with more questions than answers. The final moments of a person found in the backwoods can be incomprehensible. More mystery than explanation. In the wild sometimes closure isn’t possible...The Deer - Gruesome scenes stumbled upon by the daytripper, a horror tableaux of gore and viscera. A lawlessness that belie the very basic laws of the natural world...The Other Side of the Tent - While sleeping we unconsciously we reach out for the closest love and comfort we can grasp onto. What happens though, when you open your eyes and you don’t know who it is on the other end of that embrace.
I’m your host Cull and this is Backwoods Creepy - Strange Encounters in the Forest.
Search and Rescue teams have an incredibly difficult and important task. It’s in the job title; they seek and they rescue. They go into the wilderness to ideally save the lost or injured and bring them safely home. Unfortunately, occasionally a rescue becomes a recovery and the once lost or injured pass beyond aid. A Search and Recovery team is no less heroic. They are bringing people home to give families closure. Sometimes though, a body is found and comes with more questions than answers. The final moments of a person found in the backwoods can be incomprehensible. More mystery than explanation. In the wild sometimes closure isn’t possible.
Our first tale today is called Search and Rescue
Nature can be vicious. Kill or be killed. With very few exceptions, mainly accounted for in human activities, killing is not purposeless. Food. Mating rights. Territoriality. Usually there is a reason for the violence found in the wild. But then there are instances that defy explanation. Gruesome scenes stumbled upon by the daytripper, a horror tableaux of gore and viscera. A lawlessness that belies the basic laws of the natural world.
Our second tale today is called The Deer
There are few things as comforting as the touch of a loved one. A mother’s hug. A father’s hand on the shoulder. A grandparents kiss on the cheek. Simple. Sweet. Even in our sleep we seek the warmth of human touch. Unconsciously we reach out for the closest love and comfort we can grasp onto. What happens though, when you open your eyes and you don’t know who it is on the other end of that embrace.
Our third tale for today is called The Other Side of the Tent
Alright folks, thanks for listening to Backwoods Creepy - Strange Encounters in the Forest. The first story is from plated_lead and the second was courtesy of batmannibal and the third story is from MandyScott.
Send me your story to backwoodscreepypod@gmail.com. Ideally your story truly happened to you and is 1000 words at least. You can also dm or message me on Twitter/Instagram/TikTok @backwoodscreepy.
https://linktr.ee/backwoodscreepypod
As always, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and spread the word! To support the show and help keep the content rolling go to Patreon and search Backwoods Creepy. As a Patron you’ll get episodes early, special Patrons only content, and more. patreon.com/user?u=90835879
Music and SFX - A Hand In The Dark by Underbelly and Ty Mayer courtesy of YouTube Free Studio Library
I’m your host Cull and this is Backwoods Creepy
Musical Interlude
Intro 1
Search and Rescue teams have an incredibly difficult and important task. It’s in the job title; they seek and they rescue. They go into the wilderness to ideally save the lost or injured and bring them safely home. Unfortunately, occasionally a rescue becomes a recovery and the once lost or injured pass beyond aid. A Search and Recovery team is no less heroic. They are bringing people home to give families closure. Sometimes though, a body is found and comes with more questions than answers. The final moments of a person found in the backwoods can be incomprehensible. More mystery than explanation. In the wild sometimes closure isn’t possible.
Our first tale is called Search and Rescue.
Years ago, I moved from a very small town to a remote valley out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by National Forest and not many neighbors… it was just what I had always wanted.
At that point in my life, I had been a paramedic for about four or five years and, being an outdoorsy, civic minded sort, I decided to volunteer my services with a local Search and Rescue organization. For being such a tiny, poorly funded organization, we were surprisingly busy… in the nine years I was with them, we’d have at least one rescue (sometimes several) every weekend Spring through Fall.
The source of the majority of these calls was the roughly 100 miles of poorly maintained fire trails that were very popular with dirt bike and quad riders. When they’d inevitably get lost or wreck and get injured, we’d head out, track ‘em down, provide medical care, and fly them out on a helicopter or put them on a stokes basket mounted to a janky-ass trailer thing we’d pull with a quad.
About two weeks after joining, and with zero training beyond what I had learned as a Boy Scout and medic, I got my first call. A group of dirt bikers from the city had lost a member of their party. For some reason, they had put their least experienced rider at the back of the group of a dozen or so riders and took off into the woods. When they returned to the trailhead four hours later, the inexperienced guy was missing.
They set out again and looked for him for four or five hours, then gave up and called 911.
The time interval from the initial 911 call until we had a squad assembled at the trailhead was pretty impressive, no more than twenty minutes, but we were already eight or nine hours behind the ball. We did a very quick briefing, distributed maps, divided into teams, then set off.
They put me on a quad with the most experienced guy, and we headed out. The plan was for each two to three person team to take one of the longer trails that ringed the place, then after searching those we’d systematically work our way into the shorter, maze-like trails that made up the interior. This was to be a “hasty” search, none of that grid search crap. Just riding around looking for clues.
I don’t know what I had expected, exactly; maybe a few dirt roads through the woods or something, but these trails were an absolute nightmare. They were extremely rugged, technical trails, where you really had to know wtf you where doing and where you were going or you’d never make it out.
GPS rarely worked due to the rugged terrain and tree cover, radios and cell phones were a crapshoot, and the maps didn’t account for all the random trails riders would just sort of make… the only marked roads were fire breaks, and mileage wise those accounted for maybe 10% of the trails. Why this guy hadn’t been partnered with someone or put at the front of the group is a mystery.
Four hours into this I’m caked with mud, bleeding from being hit with branches, exhausted, and just fucking done. We take a water break and hear broken radio traffic that sounds like the bike has been found, but no rider. It’s only a couple of miles from us, so we head in that direction.
When we get there, the bike is off to the side of the road, along with the quads of the other teams, but we can see them a few hundred feet in the woods. We walk over and find them looking down at the missing person, who is very dead. Lips blue, skin dusky, arms spread out like a cross. At first glance, his eyes looked wide open and solid white but when I examined him I could see that his eyes were actually covered with fly eggs. Dude had been dead for a while.
It didn’t make sense though… his bike still had gas in it, he had water and food, and he was a healthy guy in his late 20s. Why was he dead? It looked like he had simply laid his bike down, then ran into the woods to die.
Mission accomplished, I guess.
We wrapped him in blankets, then put him on the stokes and took him to the trailhead where the coroner was waiting. About a week later I ran into the coroner and asked what the cause of death had been. The pathologist's determination was “cardiac arrhythmia secondary to extreme anxiety”. Which means an arrhythmia occurs in response to a sudden (and unexpected) surge of adrenaline that the body creates when it is stressed. The guy literally died of fright, which up to that point I had always assumed was some Hollywood bullshit
I’ve always wondered what was going through his head… was he just afraid of the woods, or of being lost? If so, why did he run blindly into the woods instead of continuing to follow the trail?
There’s a part of me that thinks he may have seen something out there… I’ve heard a lot of stories about weird shit in these woods, and I’ve seen a few strange things myself, so it wouldn’t surprise me
Musical Interlude
Intro 2
Nature can be vicious. Kill or be killed. With very few exceptions, mainly accounted for in human activities, killing is not purposeless. Food. Mating rights. Territoriality. Usually there is a reason for the violence found in the wild. But then there are instances that defy explanation. Gruesome scenes stumbled upon by the daytripper, a horror tableaux of gore and viscera. A lawlessness that belies the basic laws of the natural world.
Our second tale is called The Deer.
Hello, my name’s Kal.
I’m not really sure if this would be considered a paranormal story per se, but nothing else really makes sense.
Let me explain, my family would go camping every chance we got. The place we’d always go had no natural predators, at least, nothing bigger than a fox. My dad specifically chose this spot so us kids—me and my two siblings—could frolic through the woods without having to worry.
This particular trip was during a May long weekend. There was still a considerable amount of snow, so my dad brought our ATV’s and some sleds for us. It was the day after we had arrived, and my dad wanted to go on a little trip down the road we came up. I asked if I could come, and he said sure. We both hopped on his quad and set out on our little trip.
We had deer around the area, nothing crazy, but the odd one would wander through our campsite. You could tell they had no natural predators, since they didn’t run away when there was a human around. My siblings and I would always manage to get pretty close to them, before my parents yelled at us to stay away, that is.
Anyway, my dad and I were a few miles from the campsite when we rounded a corner, and came across one of the most gruesome sights I have ever seen in my life. On the side of the road were the pieces of a deer, at least, I think it was one.
There was blood absolutely everywhere, worse still, there was steam coming from the remains, which meant this was a recent kill.
My dad is usually a pretty calm guy, not much can rattle him. But I could tell that this freaked him the hell out. He was in the process of turning us around when this… I don’t know, screech came from the forest. It was so loud, we both flinched. I remember searching the forest for the source, but my dad was in the process of hauling ass down the way we came.
It could’ve been a trick of the light, or because I was freaked out and maybe I was seeing things. But, I could’ve sworn I saw something running alongside us, but only for a second or two. I know I sound absolutely crazy, but the thing looked like a large dog before it vanished into the trees. My dad raced back to camp and we were all packed up and headed to a different location by the end of the day.
We never did go back to that campsite after this encounter.
I did ask my dad about it a couple years ago, he just said it was because the new campsite was better than the old—better trails and whatnot. I think he’s full of crap, I think whatever we encountered that day scared the hell out of him, and I think that whatever I saw, he did too.
But I, for one, am thankful we never went back. I wasn't sure if I would be able to sleep at night after what I saw. It still haunts me to this day.
Musical Interlude
Intro 2
There are few things as comforting as the touch of a loved one. A mother’s hug. A father’s hand on the shoulder. A grandparents kiss on the cheek. Simple. Sweet. Even in our sleep we seek the warmth of human touch. Unconsciously we reach out for the closest love and comfort we can grasp onto. What happens though, when you open your eyes and you don’t know who it is on the other end of that embrace.
Our third tale is called The Other Side of the Tent.
This happened when I was in elementary school. I wanna say I was like 9 years old.
My parents took me and my younger sister camping all the time in California. My mom admits that her placement of my sister and I in this tent is REALLY fucked. If she could go back and change it she would.
The tent was set up with a space for two people in the middle, think of a square with two rectangles on the side with a divider that splits up the rectangles on the side.
So like privacy for my sister and I… but like someone could rip the ten on my side in the night and snatch me and they wouldn’t be able to see because of the divider, anyways hopefully I painted a picture.
I’m positioned where to my left is my parents sleeping and to the right was the wilderness. I still remember the set up of this campsite and you could see the campsites next to you but they were distantly placed.
Anyhow, I wake up and am cuddling what I think is my mom’s arm. I can feel the warmth through the tent(as the divider would block me from actually touching her hand). I’m waking up out of the haze of just opening my eyes when I realize I’m facing the RIGHT direction.
I remember silently freaking out and for some reason my kid brain instead of flinching thought to move my hand around what I felt to confirm what I was feeling.
I didn’t wake my parents up. I just laid there really scared and I eventually passed out again and I must’ve not made a big fuss about it back then. I did tell my mom and I think she kinda brushed it off as a “you were dreaming thing” but as time went on that memory stayed with me to be one of my most vivid memories.
It could’ve been so many things, I don’t like to even think of all the possibilities.
Alright folks, thanks for listening to Backwoods Creepy - Strange Encounters in the Forest. The first story is from platedlead and the second was courtesy of batmannibal and the third from mandyscott. Send me your story to backwoodscreepypod@gmail.com. Ideally your story truly happened to you and is 1000 words at least. You can also dm or message me on Twitter and Instagram @backwoodscreepy.
As always, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and spread the word! To support the show and help keep the content rolling go to Patreon and search Backwoods Creepy. As a Patron you’ll get episodes early, special Patrons only content, and more.