There were four of us that weekend: me, Daniel, Sarah, and Chris. We had been friends since college, and every year we tried to plan at least one adventure together. This time, Chris suggested camping in a forest he’d read about online — remote, untouched, and known by locals as the darkest forest because of how little moonlight reached the ground.
At first, it was fun. We set up our tents, lit a fire, and joked about how creepy it felt to be so isolated. Sarah teased that it was like the start of a horror movie, and we all laughed a little too loudly to cover up our nerves. The air was fresh, the fire warm, and for a while it felt like the perfect escape from everyday life.
But as night fell, the mood shifted. The forest seemed to swallow the sound of our voices. No crickets, no owls, no wind in the branches. Just silence. It was the kind of silence that presses against your ears until you start to imagine sounds that aren’t really there.
Later, when the fire burned low and we retreated into our tents, I woke to the crunch of footsteps outside. Slow. Heavy. At first, I thought it was Chris going to grab more firewood, but then I heard him whisper from his tent: “Who’s out there?”
The footsteps stopped. For a moment, there was nothing. Then Sarah screamed. We all scrambled out of our tents, flashlights cutting through the blackness. Sarah was pointing at the trees, her face pale.
The light beams caught something between the trunks — a figure. Tall, much taller than any human, with broad shoulders and eyes that glowed when the light touched them. It didn’t move. It just stood there, watching us.
We froze, unable to breathe. Then Chris shouted for us to run. We grabbed nothing, leaving behind the tents and the firepit. The four of us sprinted through the forest, branches slapping our faces, until we burst onto the dirt road where we had left the car. Only when we slammed the doors shut and sped away did we dare to look back.
The forest stood silent, dark as ever, but something in my gut told me we hadn’t escaped.
The next morning, we returned with a ranger to collect our things. But the campsite was gone. No tents, no firepit, not even footprints. It was as if we had never been there at all.
And Sarah swears she saw it just before we ran — the figure wasn’t chasing us. It was waving.
