love being out in the dark, just need to remember that WE are the scary things out in the woods at night.
loved this thread and got my thinking of night walks we would the the kids on at camp the last few years in my job as a youth worker.
the whole point of the walk, in the dark, was to show the kids that we have night vision, don't always need torches and we don't need to be scared of the dark. thats what it was meant to be anyway lol, after 3 years it turned into a full blown ghost walk which was always the highlight of the weekend.
not sure if anyone is familiar with Inverkip in Scotland but it has alot of scary history with witches, wizards and ghost etc and our camp was in the hills above Inverkip.
we always told ghost stories the first night which always freaked them out before they went to their tents, the next day we would go awalk etc and make sure the kids noticed the big notice board in town with information on auld dunrod and the last witch burnt in Scotland/Inverkip, this would freak them out even more before that nights ghost walk.
so we would wait till it got dark (after 10pm) and we would all meet and go over "health and safety" tie your laces incase you have to run, be quiet etc incase we draw attention to our selfs and NO torches or phones as the lights would def give us away, and never ever go off the path!!!
long story short we would go a walk up the hill, visit the "auld dunrods house" visit the tree where the last witch was burnt and loads of other stories i made up as we went along, all this with no torches mind, the best bit was coming back down the hill (on same path) convincing them all we where lost and i would blame everyone but myself, had loads of frights and tears lol and that was just the staff, would always end the walk asking how much better people could see with their night vision before shining my hidden torchi n their eyes.
point of my story is its amazing how peoples imagination can go wild i the dark, we had kids (teenagers) convinced that they where begin chased by Orbs (evil fairy lights in the woods), seeing all sorts of shapes and sizes in the trees that weren't there and how easily the lost their bearings.
the scariest thing that happened for me was on the last one we did, i had set a wee joke in an area of the woods where we always told a story, on the way there the kids where saying they could here voices etc and i just assumed it was them freaking out and then i saw some lights in the area we where heading to, never once seen anyone up there before and didn't want to at near midnight, though we probably gave them the fright of their lives with all the screaming we where doing!
so apart from being terrified of the ghost stories the kids loved being out in the dark with no lights and it was so alien to them, just get out and go for a walk and leave the torch at home!
