"Weirdest" outdoor experience?

[Great Pebble]

Weird in the mystery theatre vein...

Another thread brought this to mind for me.

More years ago than I care to remember I was in a well known local forest with two friends, brothers, not outdoor types.
We'd no real gear with us at all save sleeping bags (and in one case a Manchester United quilt) as we'd intended a night on the beer followed by sleeping in a local hostel type thing. Well out of the holiday season, it was nearly always completely empty. This particular weekend there was a Bible Revival thing happening in the hostel. No room at the inn. Rather than head home we elected to sleep in the forest which was quite close by.

Now, as I said, no kit... Save the usual contents of my pockets. Which usefully amounted to a Leatherman, AA Maglight and a lighter. A brief stop at the cornershop scored some tins of beans, a bottle of water, teabags and milk, beer, binliners and string. In concert with what we could find "in the wild" this made for all the essentials for a different but reasonably comfortable night in the boonies for the lads who didn't normally do silly things like that.

Anyway, shelter up, fire lit, sleeping bag covers made, myself and one of the brothers walked back down to the car for the food and beer - no load carrying equipment enforced two trips. It was obvious that the place we'd parked was a local lovers lane and there were quite few people "parked".
I didn't think anymore about it, and we headed back to camp for food, beer and fireside revellry.

After a few hours, the brother who owned the car stareted to worry a bit about the safety of the vehicle with all the other people who had been about the car park. He wanted to check the car and wanted me to go with him, but every time we left the campfire, he'd get about 100 yds and refuse to go any further "in case we got lost". Neither would his brother, they refused to leave the primordal safety of the fire.

So muggins here elected to head down and do the job solo. It was only about a ten/fifteen minute stroll, all off path. Just about in the middle of the journey I came upon two persons, both big chaps, absolutely stereotypical bikers, though no colours in evidence, struggling with what was obviously a very heavy, very big package. As soon as they saw me, minimag in hand they stopped dead and stared, completely silent. I did exactly the same. We stared at each other for... I don't know how long, but just at the point where I was considering saying something like "nice evening chaps" and passing on my way, they turned tail and ran... So did I. They dropped whatever it was they were having so much difficulty in carrying.

I got as far as the camp and was just, excitedly, relating what had happened when there was a single, long note blown on a horn of some sort... Like an atonal hunting horn.

Instant total sobriety and serious lack of desire to sleep. We sat there until light, struck the camp, taking every sign we'd ever been there and hightailed it out of Dodge. I considered a couple of times going to investigate the "package" and tried to interest the other pair in accompanying me, I wasn't altoghether disappointed when they refused. There was no sign of it the following morning.

 

[Motorbike Man]

:yikes:

 

[ScottC]

Oh why didn't you go back and look this will annoy me all night now. T:

Nice story though.

 

[TAHAWK]

Many years ago, I and three pals were backpacking on a very hot day in the mountains of east-central California. We came to an established camping site near a paved road. As we set up camp, we noticed an old truck parked at the edge of the road. Perhaps a half hour later, one of our group, Ted, went to the pit toilet to do the necessary. We heard his scream. As he'd opened the door to the "outhouse," a rather "fragrant" corpse had fallen forward against him.

It developed that the deadun' was the owner of the old truck. He'd passed on from a heart attack at an advanced age.

We seldom met after that day without some comment on "Ted's Little Surprise."

 

[RovingArcher]

Years ago, there was a serial killer that was named because of his letters he sent to police and newspapers. They called him the Zodiac killer. :shock: They had a description of the man in the paper and the same night, a young couple that attended my high school were killed in a remote park named Blue Rock Springs park, which was 5 miles from my home with my parents. :roll: The double murder was attributed to this Zodiac person. Two nights later 3 friends and myself were cruising the back roads doing a bit of drinking in the drivers 53 chevy sedan. On our way back to civilization, we noticed a relatively new (60s) pickup and the man behind the wheel matched the description in the paper. :shock: The driver of our car punched the pedal to the metal and we were flying around the sharp curves of the old country road and the pickup was right on our tail. I was sitting in the back seat along with my pal Louie, who considered himself a gangster of sorts and carried a small .22 caliber pistol. When we heard the first shot, we thought it was a backfire, but the second gunshot sound resulted in a blown our rear window :yikes: and glass cuts on the bunch of us. Louie fired back at the truck through the now gone window opening and the driver hit his brakes and we lost him. We went straight to the police station, filed our frantic report, leaving out the part of shooting back and went got patched up and then more drunk. They never did catch that guy and the killings just stopped and Zodiac was supposedly never heard from again. Another chapter in the life and times of Wild Bill. :wave:

 

[ChrisKavanaugh]

I was attending U.C. Santa Cruz which quite possibly has the most beautifull campus anywhere, being situated in a coastal grove of redwoods and mixed oak scrub. Two members of the old Irish group THE BOTHY BAND were on tour and gave a concert at a small civic hall. I wound up sitting next to this red haired scot named Annie. She was dressed in a Indian madras dress, barefoot and even smelled like a wood nymph. She had gone on a worldwide vacation and wound up in California as a rather unusually illegal alien. I bought her tea and scones and we became fast friends. But she would'nt give me her address or telephone # I would meet her downtown and we'd always part at the busstop. So one day I'm out hikiing in the redwoods with huge zinc cromate yellow bannana slugs, skunks, spotted owls and wierd, potentially poisonous or psychotropic mushrooms all giving it a lewis Carol madness and thinkiing rather lustfull thoughts about this fey spirit. I start hearing celtic harp music. O.K. who needs 'shrooms? There had been a rumoured treehouse built during the halcyon 60s somewhere in this grove. Nobody could ever find it. So im looking for this musics source and almost walk into this ancient tree with a wooden ladder hammered to it and dissappearing into the fog drip. I get nosebleeds just looking over second story balconies. But I started to climb and finally @60' up I reach a ledge and hear a voice 'well, you've got me at last." It was Annie with a small cookset, sleeping bag, cassette tape player and a few other bags of clothing and toiletries. I wound up spending the night, drinking some single malt scotch and watching the biggest and closest full moon in decades with our feet dangling over the edge snugled next to each other. Sadly, Annie decided to move on with just a note and no contact info a month later :?:

 

[RovingArcher]

I'd call that beautiful. Some of those Woodnymphs can stll be spotted by the young adventurer from time to time.

 

[TheViking]

It's not actually a weird outdoor experience, but it's unusual and not after the book. ):

My friend and I decided to sleep outside. It had been raining for several days and it was stopped now. There was a big, big puddle with water. It was about 10-15 cm. deep and cold. We had 3 pallets which became an island.... :shock:

So with waterproof boots and boxes we lugged some mats and sleeping bags out to the island which we were about to sleep on. I can say so much, that the mats we're ruined by the pallets because of the room between the boards. :roll: On the most rotten pallet we made a fire, but it burnt through really quick (and into the water ), but we managed to cook some pasta before that happened.

There was very little room on the "island" and I kept falling into the water with the footend of my sleeping bag. It happened quite a few times. But we got a great laugh. :roll: But we fell to sleep, but not for long. :roll: It started ro rain in the middle of the night. :yikes: We had no cover: no tarp, no tent, no sleeping bag liner, nothing! Just the sleeping bags.

We made a deal from the start that no matter what, we wouldn't go inside!
We lugged out stuff into "land" and now it had stopped raining. But around 06:00 in the morning, it started again. :roll: But we didn't wanna bother anymore so, heck...... When it stopped in the morning and we both were awake, we started to have a fight, which were about to end, badly. :roll:

We were in the sleeping bags and couldn't use the arms or legs and I was about 'attacking' his back, when he suddenly striked his head upwards, right into my nose. :shock: :yikes: That really hurt. But we were friends right afterwards, as I knew it was only an accident. :biggthump
We are still friends, but don't hang out as much as before.

Cheers :uu:

 

[hootchi]

I remember when that happened in a tent on dartmoor once. :tw: Someone got thrown onto a platapus and it exploded and it ...

 

[bothyman]

I remember when that happened in a tent on dartmoor once. :tw: Someone got thrown onto a platapus and it exploded and it ...

First a Wolf , now a Platypus what next :roll: was it on its holidays?? :rolmao: :rolmao: :rolmao:

 

[hootchi]

I havent told you about the fox that stole all of our food during the night. We were on Dartmoor and slept under the stars for a change using our bags for pillows.
When we woke up in the morning my bag was halfway up the hill, storm cover had been ripped off! My friends bags were fine, the fox had taken the food from under their noses(literally). we looked for our breakfast but could not find it, all our pockets were empty. One had lost his gaiters, we never found them, but we found his chewed up lunch box around the corner. :yikes:
All i had was two satsumas left, and teeth marks in my bag. I had to ration the satsumas to one segment per hour. It was a hard day and we were not walking slow! :roll:
Moral of the story keep food in your sleeping bag with you. :rolmao:

 

[Snufkin]

Moral of the story keep food in your sleeping bag with you. :rolmao:

Unless you're in bear country :shock:

 

[arctic hobo]

Unless you're in bear country :shock:

Indeed.

Weirdest one I have wasn't that amazing, but while sleeping out in Jotunheimen, Norway, we were woken up at about 2 AM by screams :yikes: They went on so long, me and my friend Adam went to see what was going on. We saw an old man, staggering up Visbretind (a rather large mountain), bent so his arms were below his knees, and screaming at the top of his very loud voice. He had no pack, and wore shorts and a T shirt... it was light as it was summer. It was so so weird we just retreated slowly and his screams eventually faded and stopped.

 

[george]

When I was working in Asia we used to camp at night with hammocks and bashas set up in a circle around the fire. I would usually set mine up a little bit outside the circle just to get a bit of space.


Of course the problem was that if someone needed to get up in the night for a pee then they would just walk out far enough from the circle that they could pee in peace, so that meant that people would sometimes walk in to my guy lines or bump my hammock lines.

one night I was sleeping when I felt the hammock being bumped, so I grunted rolled over and went back to sleep, thinking it was someone out for a pee. A little while later (don't know how long, I had fallen back to sleep) I felt a bump on the bottom of the hammock. I thought it was some lazy ****** who was trying to get back under my hammock rather than walk around the trees at the end, so I swore at them this time and called them several choice names for waking me up. I felt several bumps on the bottom of the hammock a few moments later and losing my temper (I'm normally incredibly placid - but try waking me up for no good reason!) I hit down through the hammock at whoever it was, while telling them exactly what I thought of them. I hit something satisfyingly solid and with a "that'll teach em" thought going through my head, I went back to sleep.

As day broke I was woken to the sound of our guides shouting "ada harimau" "ada harimau". the fire was lit spectacularly with a bottle of kero and people started running about. It took a little while for my sleep addled brain to translate what they were saying - but when I did I went kind of pale for a while - Harimau means tiger - and the pug marks were all round my hammock and basha!

George

 

[Motorbike Man]

I'd forgotten about this one until I saw a similar thread over on BB, so here goes. Would probably have to sitting up On Danebury Ring, an iron age hillfort near Andover round a fire with some friends one very foggy night. We'd all been haveing a bit to drink. We weren't legless drunk, but distinctly sozzled when one of us, Paul, decided to go and answer a call of nature. A little while later, he re-appeared, stone cold sober and looking like he'd seen a ghost. White as a sheet and shaking visibly he sat down by the fire and proceeded to get very drunk as fast as he could. We spent about half an hour trying to drag out of him what happened. Apparently, after relieving himself, his sense of direction vanished and he couldn't find us. After walking around for a few minutes, he thought he heard music coming from the distance and headed towards it to try and get his bearings. As the music got louder, Paul was thinking there was something not quite 'right' about it when, all of a sudden, the fog cleared. What scared Paul so much was the fact that sitting round a camp fire was a group of Roman Legionaries some of whom were playing period instruments!!!!! :yikes: Paul sobered up instantly and just started running, all of a sudden regaining his sense of direction, straight back to us. Of course, you can imagine how we laughed at Paul, but I knew him quite well and knew he wasn't easily rattled so I decided to go and have a look for myself. Off I went, I'm not afraid to admit a little nervously. Sure enough, after a few minutes, round the other side of the hill, I started to hear strange music, and then the fog cleared and there they were, ROMAN LEGIONARIES!!!!! I was just about to start running when I noticed something a bit odd. It's not often you see Roman Legionaries drinking bottles of Scrumpy Jack cider!!! :?: Turns out it was the local re-enactment society having a bit of a night out. We were somewhat relieved when we found out the truth. :roll:

 

[Lycanthrope]

LOL motorbike dude.....that's brilliant, even if it's not true it's genius. I've spat coffee all over the screen while reading it. Brilliant.

 

[Motorbike Man]

LOL motorbike dude.....that's brilliant, even if it's not true it's genius. I've spat coffee all over the screen while reading it. Brilliant.

I kid you not Lycanthrope, was a few years ago, but most definately true, seeing the fog clear l;ike that round their fire is something that will stay with me till the day I die!!

 

[JakeR]

Great pebble, how big was the package? :yikes:

 

[Great Pebble]

Big enough to have been the sort of package that Tony Soprano has buried, in woods, at night...

 

[JakeR]

Did you tell the police?