These are our scary camping stories and deep woods horror stories: the trips where the trail went quiet, the campfire burned low, and something out past the treeline started paying attention. Campers who wake up to find their tent unzipped. Hikers who pass the same stranger three times on a mountain with only one path. Trail cams that catch a shape walking upright between the pines at 3 a.m.Every story here is set somewhere you could really drive to, from the Appalachian hollers to the national forests of the West, and most of them start like a normal weekend. If you like terrifying campfire stories you can tell out loud, start with the newest posts below, or browse our best horror stories to read at night. Short on time? Try the short horror stories you can finish in five minutes.
Most creepy campfire stories are about something out in the dark. Ours is about something that came right up to the fire ring while we slept and left a gift. Four gifts, actually. Then a fifth one, for somebody who wasn’t even there yet. I work at a print shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In … Read more
Growing up in West Virginia, I heard a lot of Appalachian mountain scary stories. Lights on the ridge, voices that call your name, things you don’t whistle at after dark. I never believed any of them. Then I went mushroom hunting alone in the Monongahela National Forest, and somebody marked my trail behind me with … Read more
People always ask wilderness rangers for scary park ranger stories. I usually tell them about the bear that took a whole cooler or the guy who tried to hike out in flip-flops. I don’t tell this one. This is the empty tent that moved closer to my cabin every night. Other rangers trade park ranger … Read more
Every deer camp has its scary hunting stories. Most of them are about getting lost, or a bear, or a buck that charged somebody’s uncle in 1974. Mine is about a second tree stand that showed up across the hollow from mine, facing my stand instead of the deer trail, and moving a little closer … Read more
I always thought scary bigfoot stories were for people who wear camo to the grocery store. Then my dad and I spent a weekend at his cabin in the Washington Cascades, and something in the trees learned his knock. I’d heard plenty of bigfoot horror stories from guys at the gas station. None of them … Read more
My friends and I have told scary campfire stories every Halloween weekend for ten years. This is the year a stranger walked out of the dark, sat down in the fifth chair, and told one about us. We’ve heard a lot of terrifying campfire stories at that fire ring, and this is the one none … Read more
This trail cam horror story begins with a missing wool jacket at a campsite in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and an animal I was sure had dragged it away. Then I got home and looked at what my camera caught at 2:13 in the morning. I lost my dad’s jacket on a camping trip in September … Read more
This creepy geocaching story starts with an old ammo can on a ridge in western North Carolina and a paper log that should have been ordinary. Every name in that log was different, but every line was written by the same hand, and the last one was written for me. I’ve been geocaching for six … Read more
You can feel it when something is watching you. It’s an old instinct, older than language itself, buried somewhere deep in the animal part of your brain. The thing watching our campsite that night woke that instinct in all five of us at once, and none of us wanted to be the first to say … Read more
My uncle was a park ranger for thirty-one years, and the park ranger’s warning he gave me is the reason I never go deep into the woods alone. When he finally retired, after a few drinks one quiet night, he told me about the rules — the real ones, the unofficial ones that aren’t written … Read more