8 Skinwalker Stories Animated [Compilation]

The story begins when I was a child. My father at the time was a big hunter and trapper in the woods nearby. He would set traps for small game out in the woods. I remember one evening my father coming in late from checking his traps.
His hands and shirt were covered in blood. Thankfully, the blood wasn’t his, but of that of an animal that had been caught in his trap and something bigger eating it. I remember from that night on that the woods were off limits to us kids.
This was quite awful since my brothers and sisters often played in the woods nearby. I remember asking my father why we weren’t allowed in the woods and he always gave the same answer. It wasn’t safe. Over the next couple of years, my father would stop hunting altogether.
Hunting was something that my father and his family were quite passionate about.
To see him no longer interested in his most favorite hobby was quite disturbing. Something happened in the woods that had spooked him entirely and he wouldn’t tell us what it was. I remember one Halloween I was 15 that my brother and my friends decided to go out into those woods and stay the night in our treehouse that we built many years ago. Thankfully, our treehouse wasn’t more than 10 minutes into the woods. But still, we were pretty terrified. Knowing that there was something out in the woods that spooked my father gave me the creeps. Before we entered the tree line, I already had the feeling of being watched, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be labeled the coward in our friend group. At this point, the sun had set, so it was dark out. We had our flashlights to guide us, but the woods were so thick that it seemed to swallow all the light that the lights gave off.
The 10-minute walk into the woods felt like forever. Maybe it was further back than I remembered, or maybe we were just scared. Finally, we reached the treehouse. The treehouse seems smaller than I remembered, and it looked quite weathered, but overall, it looked to be in decent condition. We climbed the ladder to our treehouse and went inside.
While inside, my friends and I found all of our favorite toys that we left there years ago. We had a brief rush of nostalgia hitting us all at once. For a very brief moment, we felt like we were younger kids and completely forgot that we were in the middle of the woods at night. While we were exploring the treehouse and playing with our toys, we heard a scream coming from the woods.
The scream sounded close. It was a type of scream you wouldn’t typically associate with a human, especially out in the woods at this hour of night. All of us were silent. Out of fear of being spotted, all of us turned off our flashlights. We were now out in the middle of the woods at night with no lights on with something outside.
At least we were remotely safe in the treehouse. Or so we thought. The treehouse provided a false sense of security. Whatever it was out in the woods probably wasn’t capable of climbing the ladder. After coming to this realization, my friends and I felt that we were safe enough to turn on our flashlights. After peering around in the woods for a few minutes and not seeing anything, we decided that we’ve had our fun and to turn in for the night. This would mean that we’d have to climb down from our safe spot in our treehouse down into the woods. We were no longer wanting to stay in that treehouse, but no one was wanting to be the first one down into the woods. We picked my brother, who happened to be the smallest in the group, to be the first one down into the woods. We all promised to watch guard and make sure that nothing got him. I’m not entirely sure if my brother believed what we were saying, but he decided to go down anyways. As my brother descended into the woods below, I began to have that feeling again of being watched. That feeling of being watched was now accompanied with the smell of rotting flesh. I couldn’t exactly see whatever it was, but I knew it was out there. Not wanting to scare my brother, I didn’t say anything and let him continue climbing down into the woods. Once at the bottom, my other friend decided to go down. When my friend was around halfway down, he stopped dead in his tracks and shined his flashlight off into the woods. All of us gathered around to see what he was looking at, but we couldn’t see anything. Everyone was silent and intently looking for any type of movement. That’s when we saw it. At first, it looked like a deer, but all of its flesh had rotted off of its face.
The deer’s mouth was unusual. Instead of having dull teeth, it had sharp fangs.
All of our stomachs dropped. It was as if we were looking at death itself.
My brother, being on the ground, was not able to see what we were looking at. He had no idea that the creature was only a few meters away from him. Without hesitating, I told my brother to run and to get Dad. My brother took off into the dark woods, leaving a flashlight on. I looked back to see the creature again, but the creature was gone. I feared the worst and thought that it was going for my brother. My brother was rather slow, and him leaving his light on made him an easy target. We all screamed for him to run faster and did not stop or look back at all. But as we were screaming, we saw his flashlight stop moving. We were all terrified. Whatever that thing was, it probably had my brother. The time that this story took place was before cell phones, so calling for help was out of the question. We were sitting ducks in that treehouse.
About 10 minutes later, that smell of rotting flesh came back again. We turned off our flashlights so that we wouldn’t give away our position. I think the thing knew that we were out there, but didn’t know that we were in a tree. We could hear the thing huffing and making grunting sounds beneath our treehouse.
It was frustrated.
I think it could smell us, but didn’t have the common sense to look up. All of us were staring down into the dark woods, listening for any sounds. After 5 or 10 minutes of complete silence, one of my friends decided to turn on the flashlight. A move to this day I regret.
When he turned the flashlight on, it illuminated the bottom of the woods, which revealed a horrifying sight. The gross and decrepit creature was next to the ladder, looking up at us. When it finally realized where we were, it let out this horrific screech, a sound that I can only describe as our certain death. The creature then began to climb.
The thing was slow and deliberate, knowing well that we weren’t able to go anywhere. It was as if it was playing with its food. When the creature was about halfway up the ladder, the sound of a gunshot pierced the night. We were all stunned. The shot had hit a good portion of the creature and the creature climbed down the ladder. More shots rang out and the creature ran off into the woods, but it didn’t seem injured. We looked down to find my father shooting at the creature with my brother with him. My brother had made it back. We all climbed down the ladder and raced back to my house. My friends and I were expecting a huge lecture from my father, but surprisingly he didn’t say anything.
I think he was just thankful that we were okay. My brother was a hero that night. He saved all of our lives. If it wasn’t for him and his bravery, or should I say us forcing him to be the first one down, I’m pretty sure we’d have all died. That’s the story of my brother saving our lives from that thing.
I’ll never forget the first time I heard it. The scratching beneath the floorboards wasn’t what terrified me. It was when I heard my own voice calling my dog’s name from under the house.
While I was standing in the hallway frozen in disbelief some creatures shouldn’t exist at all.
In January, I moved into a small house on the edge of San National Forest after my divorce was finalized.
I was looking for peace and solitude, somewhere to rebuild my life away from the chaos of the city and the memories of my failed marriage. The house was old and charming. The thing I loved the most was the windows caught the morning light just right. It was perfect for just me and Max, my beloved dog, who had been my loyal companion through the darkest days of the separation.
From the beginning though, I had noticed something was off. Max was behaving weird. He was usually curious and bold, but now he wouldn’t go near the crawl space entrance in the hallway. He would avoid that section of the house entirely. And sometimes when passing by, he’d stop and growl, hackles raised, eyes fixed on that small wooden door set into the wall. It’s just my saw the house is settling, I told myself. But then things escalated.
At night, I began hearing soft scratching coming from under the floorboards.
Then came the muttering. A low voice seemed oddly like mine, but it was distorted, sort of.
Max, come here.
I heard it while I was going to bed.
When I looked into the hallway mirror, I saw Max standing frozen at the end of the corridor, staring at the crawl space entrance, a continuous growl rumbling from deep within his chest. The voice repeated again.
Max, come here. Max, come here.
The voice sounded deep and distorted as if something was struggling to form words with unfamiliar vocal cords. It sounded like hearing yourself on a recorder played at half speed. I couldn’t sleep that night. The next morning, with daylight streaming through the windows, I worked up the courage to investigate. I pulled open the crawl space door and shined my flashlight inside. What I found made my blood run cold. There were scratch marks on the wooden beams deep gorgeous into the wood too substantial to be from a raccoon or even a bobcat. But that wasn’t the worst part of it. Further in arranged in a perfect spiral on the door floor with dozens of animal bones and in the center a dadded scrap of what looked like human clothing. My hands trembling, I immediately called the local animal control officer. James was a burly guy in his 50s who had seen everything in his 30 years of patrolling these mountains. Or so I thought when he emerged from the crawl space, his face had gone pale beneath his beard.
Whatever made those tracks wasn’t walking on four legs. He advised me to stay somewhere else for a few night while he set up cameras and traps. I told him I’ll be leaving the next day and he can get started with his investigation. That night, Max finished vanished.
He was there when I went to the bed, but I heard him barking at 2:00 a.m. He was coming from outside, far in the woods. I grabbed a flashlight and ran into the darkness, calling his name until my voice grew.
I searched for Oz, stumbling through the underbrush. But Max was gone.
Exhausted and heartbroken, I returned to the house as dawn broke. As I was reaching the house, I heard Max barking.
I was feeling relieved and happy. But when I entered the house, the barking was coming from under the floor.
Then it shifted to a laugh.
[Music] Began laughing.
The sound was seen through pain. It was my voice and Max Boach blended together in a horrifying cacophony that seemed to vibrate through the entire house. I just stood there paralyzed as laughter faded into silence, leaving the sound of my own ragged bleeding. I moved out that morning, threw whatever I could fit into my truck and didn’t look back. I never returned for the rest of my things.
Never filed a police report about Max.
Never told anyone what I had heard.
Three months later, I saw a news report.
A young couple had bought the house.
They had gone missing within a week of moving in. Their families reported they had stopped answering calls. And when police investigated, they found the house empty, except for the crawl space door, which stood wide open.
Sometimes I wake up hearing that voice.
My voice calling in the darkness. And I wonder if I really escaped at all. If something has followed me out of that house, something that waits beneath whatever floor I walk on, learning my sounds, my patterns, my voice. Because the last thing I heard as I drove away that morning was a whisper from the backseat of my truck. You left the door open.
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We’ve never spoken about this particular event, not even among ourselves after it happened. It was with my friends Ben and Ryan and myself going camping into the woods like we used to do when we got a weekend off, or at least used to do before this. In general, we try to go to new places. There was this one forest in particular situated 2 hours away from our city that we’ve been told about.
We’ve been putting it off for a while because it was said to be dangerous, packed with wild animals that would attack campers often. Ben, in his usual part of trying to be a badass, said he would take out his shotgun and we’d be safe. Ryan was a bit of a wimp, but he agreed. So, we drove there as soon as we were able to when we had a free weekend.
We got there by midafter afternoon after we set up camp and the night was beginning to set in. We decided to go out for a walk. We secured our stuff and Ben took out a shotgun in case any animals approached us and we started following a small path that got deeper into the woods. Walks in the dark like these would always relax me. But this time I was starting to feel uneasy.
Something was off. About half an hour of walking, we started to hear noises getting closer to us. They sounded like footsteps of several big creatures closing in on us. But to this day, I swear I could also hear soft whispers beneath the noises.
Feeling like cornered animals in total panic, we began running back through the path that we had come on. During this, I somehow lost Ben and Ryan, and we could not even see their flashlights in the distance. I kept on running crapless.
At some point, I ran past an old house which seemed to have suffered a fire.
The windows were boarded up, but the door seemed to be half open. Suddenly, I heard something coming from inside.
Terrified at first, I froze, but then I realized it was actually Ryan calling for me to come inside. I was doubtful at first for some reason, but as soon as I heard the animal sounds coming closer to me. I bolted into the house and closed the door. I lifted my flashlight to look around and there was Ryan. I pointed the light to his eyes, but he didn’t seem to react much to it. In fact, he seemed really calm, which was odd for him.
“Let’s stay here for now,” he said in a relaxed tone of voice. “Those things out there could be dangerous.” “Now, I was worried about Ben, but remember that worst case scenario, he had a shotgun ready if anything attacked him.” I took a deep breath and started looking around the room. The few chairs that were laying on the floor looked charred, and in one corner of the room, there was a pile of sticks with a bunch of stones scattered around them. All of the sudden, we hear Ben’s gun go off twice.
I stood there paralyzed as every other sound in the forest stopped. I glanced briefly at Ryan and he was just looking at me completely quiet. I was about to say something when suddenly someone started banging on the door. Ryan immediately grabbed my shoulders and said, “Don’t open that door. It could be one of those things.” I started walking towards the door and he insisted, “Don’t do it. They’re going to kill us. This really unsettled me, but I was afraid it could be Ben, who had just shot one of those wild animals and was looking for shelter. I grabbed on the metal door handle and took a deep breath. And as Ryan was still talking behind me, I opened the door. A cold chill ran down my spine. Standing there in front of me was Ryan. It didn’t sink in at first as he was saying, “Hey, man. Did you hear Ben’s gun go off, too? I think we needed to find him and get the hell out of there. I babbled something incomprehensible and slowly turned around, pointing my flashlight all over the room. Nobody was there. When the light reached the corner of the room, I realized what I had been looking at earlier. It was a pile of bones and around them forming a circle were a bunch of skulls. Human skulls.
We ran off as fast as we could and found Ben near the campsite. When he saw us, he was pale and did not say a word. We got in my truck and drove off and we left the place, leaving all of our stuff behind. On the way back, after a long silence, I asked Ben what he shot at.
Some of those things came from behind in the trees and attacked him. I shot them down. Ben, what were those things? It It was you guys. I killed you both back there. The rest of the way back, nobody spoke a word. We never saw Ben again.
[Music] Arrival. Last week, my friends and I went on a school sponsored trip to Alaska set up by the Pursuit Institute.
I was placed in a group with nine. No, no, 10 other students and two little chevrons. Another group was also made up of similar numbers and each group would start at one location and then we would switch places. The trip was mostly hiking and backpacking in Denali where we would camp in tents and then hike near the Canal Peninsula where we would be staying in a cabin.
[Applause] [Music] We converged in front of a supermarket and the two groups swapped stories and shared some laughs. It was all fun, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the other group. It was all incredibly eerie, but no one seemed to notice.
Hey, how was your trip at the cabin?
It was good. We had a long hike, and you know what? Ah, he ah the forest we we Huh. The stories were incredibly vague or they would just stop halfway through as if they cut themselves from mentioning something without even realizing it. When I tried to question them further or go into details about their trip, they would simply become dazed and say it was really all just a blur. Then getting defensive, they would ask me details about our trip so far.
I scoffed and I tried to remember a specific event only to find that I really didn’t remember much either.
I began listening to my group’s own stories. We were just being as vague as them. It was all so strange that no one, not even I, immediately noticed one kid was missing from the other group.
Suddenly though, it hit me. Where’s Josh? Everyone turned to face me. Their eyes seemed glazed and cloudy. What they said next made my blood run cold. Who the hell is Josh?
Yeah, like what?
Given a nervous laugh, I turned to my own group for support only to see they were looking at me with the same expressions.
[Music] Nice, man. You had me going for a second there. All I felt was a horrible sickness rising up inside me.
But seriously, what’s with your group?
You guys are acting all weird. And where is Sarah?
Very funny.
Yeah, real original.
No one named Sarah had ever been in a group. And even I was pissed that he was making fun of me.
[Music] He looked at me, our eyes met, and we both knew that something was horribly wrong. We both seemingly knew someone who was now forgotten. He looked horrified, and I’m sure I did, too.
Before I got a chance to talk to him, we were shoved into a separate cars and we were on our way to our new destinations, the group to Denali and ours to the cabin. I doubted talking to him would have done any good anyway. What could we say? He didn’t remember Josh and I sure as hell didn’t remember anyone named Sarah.
The more I thought about it, the more I began to convince myself that it must have been a joke by everyone to screw with me. Josh was probably hiding in the car, laughing his ass off. I felt like such an idiot for believing that kid had experienced what I had when he was really just mocking me in front of everyone.
I was angry, but also relieved.
It was certainly a joke. I was actually impressed. They got autos in on it, too.
I was still pretty pissed. And I decided the next time I saw that kid who mocked me, I’ll punch him straight in the face.
How dare he mess with me by making up someone? Sarah Duffy. Yeah, my mind froze. Duffy. He had never said the last name. Where did I get that from? And why did it sound so familiar? What straddled me was that I even had a face to put with the name. My mind suddenly exploded with pictures and memories.
Sarah. She was my goddamn best friend.
How the hell did I forget about her? I was clutching my head and gasping for air as everyone in the car looked at me and began yelling for me to calm the hell down. My mind felt like it was being smashed with a sledgehammer. And the more my memory cleared, the worse it got. The memories continued rushing back into my head, threatening to split my mind into two until suddenly it was all over. I sat up and leery eyed looked around me. Everyone stared right back at me, terrified.
Guys, Sarah. Sarah Duffy, please. Dear God, tell me you remember her.
God damn it, John. that we thought you were having a Caesar or something. If you pull one more stunt like that for the sake of a joke, we’ll send you straight home. Are you okay? What the hell was that?
You guys don’t know Sarah. She was my friend. She was your friend. For Christ’s sake, Kevin, you made fun of her goofy hair right when we got off the plane in Anchorage. Please, for the love of God, tell me you remember that.
That joke has run its course. Not one of them showed any signs of recognition. I tried to remember the last time I had seen her, but any recent memories were still elusive and blurry.
We strapped our bags and set out on our 7mi hike to where the secluded lakeside cabin lay. About an hour in, I suddenly fell to my knees and then collapsed to the muddy ground. I had been trying to remember when I had last seen Sarah.
When it all came flooding back in a horrific wave of grotesque images and unimaginable terrors.
The memory. There we were at Denali campground.
Everyone was around the campfire and many were already asleep in the dense.
Has anyone seen Sarah? She still hasn’t washed her dishes.
I’m pretty sure she went to the bed already. I’ll go check to be sure.
Without thinking, I immediately ran off into the forest after her. After shoving my way through thick spruce and belows, I reached a clearing where I could barely see Sarah’s body on the ground as something obsecured by the trees and underbrush was ripping her open. She was screaming with all her might. Its long fingers curled almost all the way around her head. The sound of her death was horrendous as bowls snapped and skin was peeled away. I wanted to help, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Sarah was long dead by the time I realized that the creature was beginning to wear her.
It had hollowed her out and was now shooting her lifeless corpse onto itself.
I was still paralyzed with fear when it suddenly turned towards me.
Sarah’s grotesque and shredded carcass was now horribly reanimated and it began crawling towards me. I began frantically sprinting back towards the camp. Sarah’s cops could have easily caught with me crawling, but the thick underbrush forced it to stand up awkwardly and began a demented walk in which everything moved all wrong.
This fortunately gave me enough time to reach to the safety of the campfire.
When I arrived, I had no idea what I had been running away from.
No one asked me about Sarah because none of us knew Aar and that thing pretending to be her cringing at the light of the fire slowly slung back into the dark of the forest.
Revelation I bolted upright to people yelling, cursing and struggling to defeat. I had fallen on the ground and many people behind me tripped over my body.
Oh god, I’m sorry guys. Um, the ground is really slick here. Grumbles were heard and several insults flew my way, but we eventually got up and continued moving.
My mind was racing. The fact that I could remember Sarah when no one else could must have had something to do with seeing the creature before it stole her skin.
For me, it must have just been the initial shock that caused the lapse in the memory. It was for the same reason that I could remember Josh while the other kid didn’t. My blood froze. He didn’t remember Josh because his memory had blocked the horse from him because he had seen Josh being taken in the exact same area in which we were now hiking.
I slowly turned my head around to look behind me. And surely enough, falling from quite distance, I could see a silhouette of some sort of messed up human impersonation stumbling along just behind a grub, wearing the decaying face of Josh.
When the creature saw me looking, it darted off the path. It was following us and waiting for something.
I doubted it would attack us with such a large group. And I was sure that no one would believe me. So I simply continued hiking. We reached the cabin and everyone tried to get some last minute sleep before we started our day.
Everyone but me. I knew that the thing was lurking in the darkness of the woods surrounding the cabin, waiting for one of us to go out alone. Morning came. We would be hiking up a mountain to reach the base and thus making the trip at least 4 hours both ways.
That’s when someone said what I had been ridden the worst case scenario.
Sorry everyone, but I feel just terrible. I think I’ll stay behind on this one. You guys go on ahead. I’ll stay here at the cabin.
No, you have to come with us. You have to stay together.
Jesus, John. If she’s not feeling well, let her stay.
Uh, that’s not it. I just um fine. I’ll stay, too.
You don’t have to do that, John. I’ll be fine here alone.
No, you won’t. I don’t want to go to this dumb hike anyway. Everyone looked at me weirdly and headed off into the woods. I wasn’t sure if we could be any safer with just the two of us, but what else could I have done?
All right, we need to get inside the cabin now.
I appreciate you staying with me and all, but you’re kind of freaking me out.
Sorry, it’s pretty damn wet out here. We should really go inside.
Yeah, that’s a good plan. I better lay down for a bit.
I saw him or it just standing 20 or so feet behind Jenna decaying corpse of Josh horribly stretched and disfigured in order to cover whatever thing was wearing it. I said nothing and simply grabbed her arm taking off running to the cabin. The thing didn’t run after us. Rather, it began slowly walking toward the cabin. It knew we had nowhere to go. I locked the door and scrambled to barricade it with anything I could find.
What? What the hell is that?
I I don’t know. I just don’t know.
What does it want?
I assume it wants a new skin.
Leave us alone. Get the hell away.
She fell to the ground.
The thing moved away from the door and now stood a few inches behind one of the windows, staring in at us. Its cold gaze could be felt from behind the dead eyes of Josh’s face, and we could see the skin widening as it smiled. The thing simply stood there motionless. Then it slowly lifted up one of its hands and began lightly wrapping on the window.
It had no intentions of breaking the window or anything. It just wanted to let us know that it was there. This continued for several hours as the sunlight slowly faded away and the rain and wind picked up. Soon the sound of it knocking was almost drown out and I was having to strain to see it in the dim light. At one point I let my eyes wonder for too long and when I looked back it was gone. This This is bad. I think it’s tired of waiting.
What are we going to do now?
All we need to do is wait for the others to get back. They should be here any minute now.
Who?
The rest of the group. Those guys, you remember?
I I don’t know who you’re talking about.
It’s always been just the two of us.
My heart practically stopped. And as I sunk to the ground in despair, I began to hear knocks all around the cabin.
[Music] I am a police officer in a town in Arizona. Our town borders a Navajo reservation. Like most reservations, we have no jurisdiction on it. Since our town borders the reservation, we have gotten many calls from our town’s people saying that they’ve seen strange things on their lands. We have gotten many UFO calls, which there’s obviously nothing that we can do about it. But we have also gotten strange calls of creatures lurking into people’s windows. Some say it looks like a Bigfoot, while others say it’s a creature with antlers.
Regardless of the call, we still have to go out and make a report. And we get these calls about once a week. Something I’m going to share with you that’s currently ongoing is often referred to by me and many officers as the screaming house. Allow me to provide some context about this case. The screaming house isn’t owned by anyone. No one lives there. But we get calls every week or so from that residence of someone screaming into the phone. All of the calls are at late at night. The call started about 6 months ago. Me and my partner responded to the first call. The call happened at 1:16 in the morning. My partner and I were out there by 1:40. We pulled up to the mailbox and looked down the long dirt driveway. About halfway down the driveway, we noticed a fallen tree covering the path, so we’d have to get out. We pulled our police cruiser up as close as we could and got out. We were able to see the house and that there were no lights on. The house had two stories and was very old. My partner and I stopped about 70 yard in front of the house. We shined our flashlights all over the property and the house, not seeing anyone. The front door to the house was wide open. How did we get a call from this place? I thought to myself. We walked a couple yards closer and that’s when we heard it. It wasn’t the screaming that we heard on the phone, but rather the crying of a baby.
Something isn’t right, my partner said.
There’s no way there’s a baby out here.
This smells like a trap. I wasn’t sure whether to investigate or just to head back. I decided to investigate the house. What if there was an actual toddler that made his way out here and was lost? We decided that I would check the house while my partner would check the perimeter of the outside. I entered the front door of the house, my flashlight peering into the dark house.
The crying was coming from the basement.
I made my presence known. I got no response and the crying continued. I then quickly found the entrance to the basement. The basement door was missing.
I shined my flashlight down. I again made my presence known. The crying stopped. I was about to enter the basement when my partner buzzed me on the walkie. John, you need to get out of there now. That’s when I heard someone moving around upstairs. I bolted out of the house and down the driveway. My partner was already by the car. His gun was drawn and pointed behind me. We need to go. We need to go, he said. I jumped in the cruiser and backed the cruiser out of the driveway. The entire time my partner was asking, “Did you see it? Did you see it?” “No, I didn’t see it,” I said. We made our way back to the station. The entire time, my partner telling me what he saw. He said that when he was in the backyard, he heard something behind him. He shined his flashlight around and noticed something upstairs. He said that he was only able to notice its eyes and its teeth.
Everything else was just black fur. Now, we do have bears in Arizona, but not in our part of the state. However, on a report, we put the creature as a bear.
My partner and I both know that whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t a bear. Had my partner not notified me in time, I hate to imagine what would have happened. We still get calls from the screaming house, but we just drive by.
We don’t ever get out and investigate.
We have a pretty good idea what kind of creature lives there.
Evan always loved the wilderness. It was his escape from a life that never quite felt like his own. He had been hopping from one dead-end job after another, failed relationships and a nagging sense of unease in crowded places. When he came across the opportunity to be a fire watcher in a remote forest outpost, it seemed like the perfect chance to start fresh. There would be no people, no distractions, just nature and solitude.
The fire tower was a small creaky structure in the middle of an expansive isolated forest. A few days walk to the nearest town, miles from anyone or anything. He arrived late in the afternoon, the sun casting long shadows over the sea of trees. The air was cool, the silence thick, broken only by the occasional rustling of leaves or the distant cry of an animal. He felt at peace. On his first day, Evan did the routine check. Radio worked, supplies were stocked, and the view from the tower was breathtaking. The forest stretched endlessly in every direction, the perfect place for someone who needed to be alone. Upon finishing up his tasks for the day, he prepared to settle.
Randomly, one thing caught his attention. A dusty old leather-bound journal sitting on a shelf by the bed.
Curious, he picked it up. The cover was worn. The pages yellowed with age. A note was scribbled inside the front cover in shaky handwriting.
For whoever takes my place, may this serve as a warning. Keep watch, but never trust what you see.
The journal belonged to the previous fire watcher, a man named Harrison Wade.
As Evan flipped through the pages, he was struck by how detailed the entries were. The first few weeks were fairly mundane, reports of smoke in the distance, occasional wildlife encounters, and the challenges of living in isolation. But as he read further, the tone of the journal changed.
Harrison’s entries became more erratic, more paranoid.
21st January. At night, I went in the woods, suspecting some smoke. But I saw something, something strange, something wrong. It looked like a deer at first, but its eyes look too human, too knowing.
24th of January. There’s definitely something in the woods. I can hear it at night, whispering incomprehensible things.
I’ve tried reporting on the radio, but I’m not getting any response. Strange.
Evan’s stomach tightened. The more he read, the more unhinged Harrison seemed to become. He spoke of figures watching him from the treeine, their form shifting between man and animal. A few times he wrote about seeing his mother calling for help, his brother badly injured, and even mentioned in an entry about hearing his deceased close friend.
And then there was the mention of others.
2nd February, the other fire watchers. I saw them today. They came to check in on me. Or so they said, but they didn’t seem too human. Not anymore. Skins stretched too tight over their bones, smiles too wide, too forced. They walk like us, talk like us, but they’re not us. I can’t leave. They won’t let me.
Evan felt a chill crawl up his spine. He had met a few of the other fire watchers in passing during his orientation at the ranger station. A small group stationed in towers scattered throughout the forest. They all seemed perfectly normal, even friendly. But according to Harrison’s journal, they were something else entirely, something inhuman. The next entry was even worse.
4th February.
Last night, I saw the man in the tower across the valley. He was standing on the edge staring at me, just standing there for hours, unmoving, and then he jumped. But when I checked with the binoculars this morning, he was back in the tower staring again. No one survives a fall like that.
Evan put the journal down, feeling a knot of unease twist in his gut. Was this just the ramblings of a man who had lost his mind in isolation? Or was there something more to it? He didn’t want to believe it, but the journal made him feel like he wasn’t quite alone. That night, he tried to sleep, but every creek of the tower set his nerves on edge. At one point, around midnight, he thought he heard something outside. A faint whispering carried on the wind.
He brushed it off as his mind playing tricks on him, a byproduct of reading the journal too late into the evening.
But the next day, the unease only grew.
From the tower, Evan could see the nearest Firewatch tower about a few miles away. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now he saw it clearly, just a dark silhouette against the endless green of the forest. It was empty, or so he thought. That afternoon, through his binoculars, he saw movement. A man standing on the balcony of the distant tower, staring in his direction. Evan watched for a while, unsettled by how still the figure was. He waved, but the man didn’t respond, just kept staring.
After a few minutes, Evan lowered the binoculars and tried to shake off the strange feeling, gnawing at him. “What’s up with this guy?” he thought. Later that evening, the radio crackled to life.
“How’s it going out there?” a voice asked. “One of the fire watchers he’d met during orientation.” “Peter,” he thought, a friendly, casual voice.
Evan responded, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Quiet, nothing much to report. How about you?” Peter’s voice came through again.
“Same here. Just keeping watch. You’re doing great, by the way.
The conversation felt ordinary enough, but as the night wore on, Evan couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. The voice sounded like Peter, but flat, hollow. There was no warmth in it, just the words themselves, as if someone was mimicking Peter. That night, as Evan lay in bed, the whispering returned louder this time. He tried to tell himself it was the wind, but it sounded like voices. several of them whispering just below the edge of his hearing, too low to understand, but insistent. He covered his ears, squeezed his eyes shut, and eventually drifted off to an uneasy sleep.
In the morning, the man in the distant tower was gone. The tower looked like it was abandoned. Evan’s anxiety grew over the next few days. The journal consumed him. Every entry seemed to pull him deeper into Harrison’s madness. The whispering persisted at night, and he swore he saw movement in the forest below, dark shapes flitting between the trees. One night, he glanced out the window and saw figures standing at the edge of the forest, just barely visible in the moonlight. He grabbed his binoculars, but when he looked again, they were gone.
The final entry in the journal was dated a week before Evan had arrived.
February 27th.
They’re coming up the tower. All of them. They look like fire watchers, but they’re not. They’re waiting for me. I can’t stay here anymore. I won’t become one of them. Evan’s heart raced. What had happened to Harrison? He flipped the page, but the rest of the journal was blank. That night, as Evan lay in bed, the radio crackled again. The same voice as before.
“You’re doing a great job, Evan. Just stay focused.” Evan swallowed hard. His throat was dry.
“Thanks,” he replied. There was a pause. Then Peter’s voice spoke again, a little too casually.
“You’ve been reading that old journal, haven’t you?” Evan’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t mentioned the journal to anyone. He didn’t answer. The voice on the radio chuckled softly, a low, unsettling sound.
Don’t worry, we all read it eventually.
The radio went silent. Evan sat frozen in his chair, the weight of dread pressing down on him. The whispering outside grew louder as he sat there thinking about the events going on lately. Had he been losing his mind, or is it an effect of being so isolated? He eventually thought about the conversations with Peter, how he was the only one who radios him timely. Fear gripped Evan, a shiver running through him, one single thought had kept him at unease. Peter always said the same things each time he called up on the radio. He doubted his own mind. Was he really going crazy or something is definitely wrong with this place? His hand trembled as he picked up the binoculars and looked toward the distant fire tower again. The man was standing on the railing of the watchtowwer. He wasn’t still like the last time, but mirrored his movements. Evan finally lowered the binoculars. He saw the horrifying truth reflected in the cracked glass of the window. He was the one standing outside the tower staring in at himself. The whispering grew deafening. The figure then jumped off the tower.
[Music] [Music] I’m 16 and I live in the back woods of South Carolina. I’ve heard stories from the local kids of creepy things that happened in the forest about 2 mi away from my new home. I decide to go check it out because how scary can it really be? I grab a pistol and a knife as well as a flashlight and I head out into the dense forest. As I’m in the forest, it starts to get dark. I turn on my flashlight.
A heavy fog all of a sudden rolls in, bringing in a smell of copper and burnt hair. The hairs on the back of my neck start to stand on end. I start to hear this weird sound. It sounds like whispering and giggling. I hear something running around in the woods nearby.
I hear it get louder and closer. I turn around and see something crawling extremely fast and low to the ground on all four legs. Whatever it was seemed to have arms and legs like a human. I fire a shot right into its back and I can see the blood splatter and a gunshot wound.
It lets out a blood curdling screech and retreats back into the woods. The fog lifts and the smell suddenly goes away.
I nope my way out of there all the way home. I get home and there it is right in my driveway.
It runs towards me and I shoot at it, but the bullets don’t seem to fire. My gun was on safety. It jumps up and all I can see are its huge white eyes and I black out.
I wake up sometime later on top of my dad’s car with my dad standing over me trying to wake me up. My head hurts like nothing else and my ears are ringing. I tell my dad what had happened in the woods and he just laughs and tells me it was probably nothing. Life as I know it goes back to normal for about 3 hours when my dad says, “Hey Jake, mind getting me some of those steaks out of the fridge?” I look at him and say, “Dad, my name’s Nick, not Jake.” He just looks at me like he’s full of hatred.
I just give him the steaks and he just goes into his room with them uncooked.
He comes out of his room about an hour later with only the packaging and throws them away. I don’t even think about asking what had happened. At 11 p.m. he tells me to go to bed, which is odd because it’s Friday and he doesn’t usually care when I stay up, but I do as I’m told and I go to my room. Around 3:15 in the morning, my door opens. It’s my dad. I say nothing and pretend to be asleep.
The smell of copper returns to the air and I feel sick to my stomach.
My dad just sits on the edge of my bed and just looks at me for what I would say to be about 30 minutes. He then mumbles something under his breath with the voice I don’t recognize.
My blood turns cold and I just lay there.
He finally gets up and leaves and I finally am relieved but I cannot sleep the whole night and just lay there in my bed. Finally, the next morning, I get up and I go out into the living room. My dad is asleep on his lazy boy recliner and his nose is bleeding. I wake him up and I tell him I’m spooked and I ask him about the blood. He has no idea where it came from. I ask him about the night before and he has no idea what I’m talking about and he doesn’t remember waking me up from being on top of his car.
My heart drops when he states that it was still Friday when I know for a fact that it was definitely Saturday. He argues with me until I show him my phone with the day and time. At this point, we are both freaked out. I’ve never ventured out into the woods since then, and nothing strange has happened except sometimes I will hear the front door open and shut a few times during the night.