A Reddit user said the creepiest night he ever had in the woods happened about two years earlier on his 70-acre place in East Texas. He wrote that the property holds plenty of hogs, and every so often he heads out for a simple night sit to see what comes to the feeder. The setup that night was nothing unusual for him. There was a feeder in a small inlet along the treeline, and his tree stand sat roughly 50 yards up the line. He said he does not own night vision or thermal gear, so his routine is pretty basic: sit quietly, listen, and if pigs come into the feeder, hit the light on the rifle and go to work. A lot of nights, he said, it turns into more of a peaceful sit than anything else — just listening to the woods settle down and watching the stars.
That was the mood at first. He climbed into the stand just after sunset, and the night seemed perfect for it. There was a cool breeze in his face, frogs and crickets going, and nothing in the air that felt wrong. By about midnight, though, he was starting to doubt any hogs were going to show up. On that property they usually come in not long after dark, so by then he was already thinking the night might just turn into a late nap in the stand. That was when he noticed the sound in the woods beginning to change.
He said it was not as if every sound stopped all at once. The little noises were still there at first, but they began fading away. The breeze dropped to small puffs. Then, over the next few minutes, the woods emptied out. The last cricket chirped. The last frog croaked. He described it as the entire property being swallowed by stillness. Right when his mind fully registered that he was hearing true silence, he caught the faintest whiff of something dead on a puff of wind. He said that smell by itself did not alarm him too much because dead things in the woods are not unusual, and after that first faint hint it was gone. But the silence stayed.
Then he heard the leaves.
At first it was barely there — just a faint rustle behind him, far enough away that he had to listen for it. But it kept going. He said he sat there and listened as the crunch of leaf litter gradually worked its way closer. At some point, while he was straining to make sense of it, he suddenly realized what bothered him most about the sound. It was not moving on four legs. He said he has spent enough time in the woods, and enough time listening to people walk around in the woods, to know the difference. Whatever was coming through the leaves behind him was moving on two legs.
That realization sat him up straight.
He wrote that the footsteps seemed to be coming through the woods maybe 20 to 30 yards inside the treeline, moving parallel with it and heading his way. At that point he was hoping the person — or whatever it was — would angle off, fade away, or keep moving past. It did not. The steps kept coming. He became increasingly aware of the rifle across his lap, and he said his eyes were working desperately to cut through the thick East Texas undergrowth to his left, even though he knew how hard it is to see through that stuff in daylight, much less at night.
He said the footsteps kept moving until they were directly perpendicular to his stand. Then they stopped.
That was the part that seemed to get under his skin most. He wrote that he was staring so hard into the trees it felt like he should have been burning holes through them, and his grip on the rifle kept tightening. He was convinced whatever had come up the treeline had seen him and knew exactly where he was. He even thought about calling out “hello?” just to break the tension, but decided against it. So he sat there in the stand, gripping the rifle, with the woods dead silent and something in the treeline stopped perfectly in line with him.
After a stretch that he admitted probably was not as long as it felt, he finally heard movement again. One step. Then another. Then more. But this time the sound was going straight away from him, deeper into the woods. He said he sat there genuinely shaken and double-checked that he had a round chambered. For a moment he seriously considered climbing down and leaving right then. Instead, he told himself to wait a little longer, just to be sure. So he stayed put, rifle in hand, listening as the sounds of the woods slowly came back. He described it like the frogs and crickets were regaining confidence that the visitor had finally gone.
He ended up staying until around 3 a.m. before climbing down. And when he finally did leave, he said he tried as hard as he could not to look like he was running back to the truck.
He also added one more detail that makes the whole thing feel even more specific. The undergrowth in that section of the property is so thick that he does not even like walking through it during the day, much less at night. He said he saw no lights at any point, and he believes that if somebody had been using a flashlight, it would have shone through. So by the time he got back, he had narrowed it down in his mind to three possibilities: a person with night vision, a person who knew the property so well they did not need light, or something that was not a person at all. He finished by admitting he still does not know which answer is worse.
What do you think — if the whole woods went dead silent around midnight and you realized the footsteps coming through the leaves toward your stand were on two legs, would you have stayed in that stand as long as he did, or climbed down right then and got out?
Original Reddit post: Creepy Hunting Story
