I am sure we all have had a few moments in the woods when the hair on the back of your neck stood straight up and you got a cold chill all over. It makes you wonder why in hell am I out here?
When I think about those moments, one of them stands out more than the others. That moment for me happened many years back, I had an opportunity to archery hunt in North Carolina with a family friend for a long weekend.
We had been hunting for two days and only saw a few deer early the first day. The deer noticed me well before I saw them and all I saw was the white flag of failure as they bounced away. It was on the last day of the hunt that things got weird.
It started out as a normal fall day, we had been out that morning with no luck. Both of us were a little discouraged, and the area we had been hunting was thick and it was hard to see anything. I had forgotten to pack my tree stand so I was ground-hunting, which made things much harder.
We didn’t see a thing that morning so when we got back to the truck for lunch we talked about going to an area that my friend had never tried before, but he had heard good things about. So we drove to the top of a hill and parked the truck ― by the time we got there, it was around 2 in the afternoon.
We walked up to an open field as we looked it over, he decided to go right and I went left. I walked the edge just on the outside of the tree line until I noticed what looked like a fresh and well-used game trail. I started to look around to find a place to stand, so I could have a clear shooting lane to the game trail and the open field. I got settled into place and started to watch the area.
As the time ticked by and the sun started to set the temperature dropped and fog started at the far edge of the field it was just a few feet off the ground. As it started to slowly creep toward me, I could not shake the feeling that I was not alone. As the fog reached the edge of the wood line I started to hear soft sounds all around me. As I looked around to see if I could find the source of the noise, I started to notice rocks formed in circles ― just then the air grew colder.
I looked out into the field and the fog was now thick and had a strange gray-green color. The sun was almost completely set and the air had a strange smell now. Out in the field, I thought I could see someone walking around but just as soon as I would see them, they were gone.
It was at this point I could not help but think of the Blair Witch Project trailers I been seeing. I could swear it was the witch and she was after me. At that moment I stopped caring about deer and just wanted to get out of this place as fast as I could. As I walked more like jogged back to the truck, I swear I kept hearing sounds all around me pushing me to get out of this place. As I got closer to the truck, the fog seemed to lift, the air warmed, the noises stopped and the odd smell was gone.
I looked back at the field and the fog had seemed to have vanished. I put my bow in the bed of the truck and stood there gathering my thoughts. Just then the guy I was hunting with came around the corner. He asked if I had seen anything ― meaning a deer, of course ― and I was not about to tell him that I thought I saw a witch, he would think I was crazy. But after we got home that night, when I replayed the events over in my head, it still gave me goosebumps.
