I once got stuck near the woods in the middle of nowhere at night. It's probably still my most terrifying experience to this day. I was driving with a friend down a long straight stretch of road that seemed to go on forever through Montana when my car decided to breakdown on us. It was around one in the morning. I pulled over with the hazard lights on and rolled to a stop. I hadn't seen another car in hours so I knew we were screwed. My phone was dead and my friend couldn't get a serviceable signal. It was a piece of crap pay as you go phone.
"What now?" my buddy Brad asked.
"I dunno," I said shrugging my shoulders, "know anything about cars?" I asked. I knew we were going to be stuck there for a while.
"Umm, I know how to put gas in them," he replied.
"Well, that helps. I'll take a look I guess."
I got out of the car. It was eerily silent. Like we were in a vacuum where no sound could travel. We were miles away from any town or city. The sky looked beautiful though. It had stars peppered throughout but on either side of the road sat tall, haunting looking trees that seemingly ate the light. Looking up you saw these towering trees stretching skyward like hands, reaching for the impossible heights of the dark sky. I remember feeling like those trees were hiding something.
Past the first row of trees sat a blackness that sent cold shivers of fear through my skin. I didn't dare stare into it too long because my mind would begin to race with all kinds of spooky thoughts. Every shadow that lingered deep always seemed to contain faces or movement. The trees towered over us all the way up to the starlit sky. There was no kind of sound from anything, animals or insects. Just my breathing and the soft clicking of my hazards lights blinking. Click, click, click.
I finally popped the hood and just looked at it hoping it would somehow magically fix itself. It all looked foreign to me. At that moment, I wished I would have spent more time with my dad in the garage learning how to mess with cars instead of playing games on my PC. There wasn't any smoke which I took as a good sign.
As I was staring at the engine I heard something move in between the trees on the far side of the road. I looked for a few moments trying to see passed the darkness, looking for any kind of shapes. I could see nothing but the sound of something rustling was apparent especially inside the eerie silence of that road. I began to get creeped out and got that feeling like something was watching. That nervous, anxious feeling like someone was about to pop up from behind you. The darkness was getting to be too much and I got back into the car.
"Well?" Brad asked.
"Oh...umm...," I replied shaking off the chills, "I dunno whats wrong but man its freakin' creepy as hell out there."
"Oh, don't be a wuss."
"Then you go out there and take a look," I said hoping he would because I didn't want to go back out there.
"Maybe I will."
"Then go."
"But I don't really know anything about cars."
"Wuss."
"Fine, I'll look."
Brad stepped out of the car and disappeared in front of the popped hood. I started messing with my phone trying to get some power and maybe a signal. After a few minutes of fumbling with my phone I saw Brad slowly moving into the middle of the road trying to see into the tree line on the other side. I rolled down my window and asked what he was doing.
"I think I see something," he replied still looking intently on the trees.
"What? What's over there?"
"I dunno man, but I heard something."
"I heard something too, like something moving huh."
"Yea man and I heard whispers too."
"Whispers?" I asked getting those eerie shivers of fear in my skin again. I was hoping he was joking but the look on his face said otherwise.
"Yeah man. At first I thought it was my imagination but then I heard it again more clearly."
"Do you see anything?" I asked.
"Not anymore but I thought I saw something moving behind the tree line. Oh man, I'm creeped out. I'm getting back into the car."
We locked the doors and sat silently for a few minutes contemplating our situation. It had been hours since we had seen anyone else on the road. Both our phones were useless. So we just sat there hoping a cop or someone would come along and help. I kept my hazards on in case someone came along. We put on a CD and listened to music for a little while. I tried turning on the car but it was just a dead click. My lights were on and the radio was playing so I knew my battery charge was good. We just sat there in the car with towering trees all around us and strange noises from outside. Every once in a while we thought we would see something moving in the trees around us but we weren't sure.
Then all of a sudden the CD that was playing went to a low static hum. Small whispers began coming out of the speakers. We stared silently in disbelief at the radio, trying to make out what the voices were saying. It was small chatter and we could only make out one word, 'car.' That was enough to send deep spikes of cold fear through our spines. After a few minutes of listening with no other discernible words the CD came back on. We turned it off and sat wide eyed in silence trying to comprehend what we just experienced.
"Well that was fuckin' creepy," I finally said.
Brad sat silently staring down into his lap wide eyed. He looked disturbed.
"I remember a story my aunt used to tell me," he finally said, "about the woods where she lived. She grew up here in Montana, ya know."
All the color had drained from his face. He looked worried but continued, "she told me that there are spirits that live in the woods where she used to live as a little girl. That they try to lure the vulnerable into the woods, sometimes in subtle ways but other times violently if needed. She said she never knew how far the spirits lived into the woods but that the forests in Montana weren't a place to dabble with at night. I always thought they were cool scary stories but I'm beginning to believe she wasn't making it up."
"What kind of stories?" I asked beginning to feel the pulsating fear in my ears. I couldn't get the feeling like something was watching us out of my head.
"I just can't get the stories out of my head right now," he said shaking his head. "I wish I could not be thinking about them. But you heard those whispers too. She used to say how when she was young her and her sisters would all sleep in the same room. Like five of 'em, all sharing three beds. Their house used to sit on the edge of the woods and every once in a while, always at night her and her sisters would hear child like whispers coming from the back of the house through their bedroom window. And sometimes even small crying. They would tell their parents but of course they never heard anything and didn't really believe them. But one night, my aunt woke up to something rubbing against their bedroom window. She woke up her sister sleeping next to her and they both sat up in bed listening silently. They looked at the window and couldn't really tell what was rubbing against the window but my aunt said she remembers it sounding like how your feet sound when rubbing the bottom of the bath tub. She got up and went over to the window and that's when she began to hear weeping. My aunt remembers standing by the window hearing the small crying and then feeling like she was floating. She said that she remember a certain whisper in some weird language before blacking out. But according to my other aunt, Elizabeth, who was still watching from the bed, says she remembers seeing her sister stand there next to the window as a long dark hand rubbed across the glass wiping away the moisture on the window. She began screaming for my grandpa and ran to his room and woke him up. She kept yelling, 'hurry, hurry, a monster is taking Mary away, hurry!' So my grandpa got up and the other girls started screaming from the room. He grabbed his shotgun and ran into the room where he saw his little girls screaming and pointing towards the window where Mary was getting pulled out of the window by her hair by a long dark muscular arm. Tugging and yanking as Mary stayed in some kind of trance. My grandpa slammed the butt of his gun on the arm and it retreated. He ran outside and nothing was there. He searched a while in the trees and around the house but nothing. They would live there a few more years and then finally move but my Aunt always told me about those whispers and to be careful of what's in the trees because they can lure you in, violently if they want."
"Oh man, you are seriously creeping me out. You thought this was the best time to tell me a story like that? When we're in the middle of nowhere surrounded my creepy ass trees? Jesus."
"Hey man, I'm freaking out too but you heard those whispers right. Better to be spooked and aware than ignorant, right? I mean, we've seen enough horror movies."
"Well, I would just rather be home," I said before freezing in fear. I looked out the window behind Brad and I could see someone or something crawling low to the ground toward our car. I sat there with my mouth open not moving. Brad looked at me with fear in his eyes before turning around and asking what I saw.
"I don't know man," I finally said. "It was something crawling on all fours toward our car. Its out there right now. I saw it."
We both sat there in cold paralyzing fear trying to look out the windows without getting too close. It was absolutely silent. Then we saw something on the far side of the road. Some kind of movement. We stared out the driver side window to the tree line where we could barely make out a shape.
"Do you see that?" I asked before Brad pulled out his phone and turned on his flashlight. As soon as the light shined over the distance we both started breathing heavily in fear. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. Maybe ten feet into the woods we could see someone standing there with their backs to us. Not moving. Then all our composure fell apart and fear overwhelmed us making us gasp and yell in horror as we heard something rub across the back window of the car. We turned and saw something that looked like a hand print stretching across the back window. We turned back toward where we saw the person in the woods and nothing was there anymore.
We were beyond ourselves at this point. We were breathing wildly and our hearts racing. Then we heard one of the back doors handles clicking like something was trying to get in. The doors were locked but we were terrified nonetheless. We looked out our windows but saw nothing. Then the car started swaying from side to side. It must be in the rear I thought. We both looked toward the back window again and through the hand print we could see a dark figure peering over the trunk looking at us. It slowly lowered its head and disappeared below our line of sight. I looked out my window again and saw whatever it was crawl inhumanly fast across the road and disappear into the woods. We just sat there for a few moments in absolute horror. Then we finally saw it, a car driving up the road. At first we didn't want to get out of the car but we couldn't pass this chance. We both got out and waved the car down.
We didn't want to stay around there anymore so we got a ride to the nearest town which was about twenty miles away and rode with the tow truck back to get the car. We when in the daytime and when we got back all the doors were open and all our things were scattered out on the ground leading into the woods. Before we towed the car we gathered all our things but noticed a few things were missing. I picture of me and my sister I kept on the rearview mirror was missing. Brad had kept a photo album in his back pack in the trunk, he thought it would have been missing too but it was still there. It wasn't until we got back home and settled in that he called me. He told me frantically that there was a picture missing in the album. It was of him and his aunt Mary.
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