A few years ago, I went on a camping trip with some of my friends. We decided to go for a week and a half long hike on a trail in the mountains, and we had enough cars so we could park my friend's Jeep SUV at the end, and take my truck to the beginning of the trail so we wouldn't have to walk back to where we started. (The trail went roughly in a "U" shape, so the beginning and end weren't too far apart.) It was during early summer, so we assumed the trails would be populated and safe, however, it wasn't long before weird stuff started happening.
The first day went ok, we passed a group going the opposite way, and they seemed like they had a blast. We talked for a little bit and moved on, and shortly afterwards we took a lunch break. After eating, I went off the path about 40 feet to take a piss, and when I was done I walked over to a tall boulder with the intention of looking at the trail ahead of us. On my way over there, I ended up running into a dead moose. At first I was startled, but then I took a closer look. It looked like it had been freshly killed, and the whole underbelly was torn open, however there weren't any organs inside. I just assumed it had been killed and gutted by a hunter and he was going to come back and get it after disposing of the organs, so I left it there and went back to my friends.
The rest of the day went by relatively uneventful, and we stopped in a clearing and set up our tents and got a fire started. We spent the rest of the night just goofing around and told scary stories until it was time to sleep. Most of the stories were pretty lame, but there were a few that spooked me a little, and same for the rest of us. I knew it was all just bullshit, so I slept fine.
When we awoke the next morning, it looked like some of our gear had been moved; backpacks moved around, boots scattered around the tents, that kind of stuff. It was pretty weird, but we didn't think much of it and continued on. I guess we just assumed it was animals, or we had actually left it that way and forgot or something. During that day, we came across several more dead animals, like deer and foxes and stuff. They were all mutilated, like they had been ripped apart during death. We assumed it was just predators and didn't think much of it, even though we had never seen this many before.
Shortly before we stopped again for camp, we came across a dead brown bear off the side of the trail. It had been mutilated like the others, and had all the meat on its legs stripped off the bones, and it looked like it was walking on stilts. This really freaked us out because there's not any animals that I'm aware with that would fuck with a grizzly, let alone be able to kill it like that. On a previous hiking trip, we had had a close encounter with one, and luckily weren't attacked. From then on, we always carried guns with us when hiking, I always had my Ruger Blackhawk .44 mag in a sholder holster. As we were setting up camp about a quarter mile from the dead bear, a group of park rangers on horseback rode by carrying rifles. They stopped and talked to us for a bit, and suddenly got really curious when I mentioned the bear we came across, and all the other dead animals. They asked if I could show them to it, which I did, and they were very interested in it. I left them there and went back to camp, and we did our usual ghost stories and shit before drifting off to sleep.
When we awoke, there was more weird shit like the previous morning, and the same happened the next morning, along with seeing more animal carcasses. On the morning of the 5th day of the hike, the campsite was a mess of our shit scattered everywhere, and someone in the other tent noticed muddy hand prints on the rain flap. At this point, we decided someone was stalking us and purposely fucking with our campsite in an effort to freak us out. We decided to keep calm and not let this person win, and we knew that if anything turned violent, we were all armed and would be able to defend ourselves. We pressed onward, content not to let this ruin our trip.
The next night, we decided to have people keep watch in 3 hour shifts. Nothing happens during my watch, and I wake the next guy up for his. He brings his camera with him, because he said the flash would illuminate the area if there was someone out there. It doesn't matter though, because he ended up falling asleep just before dawn. While eating breakfast, someone asked him why he was taking pictures last night. Confused, he checks the memory of his camera, only to find pictures of everybody sleeping, including himself. My friend is terrified right now, because we were still ~40 miles from our cars and would still have to sleep a few more nights, so he decides to keep quiet about the pictures.
The next few days got considerably weirder. Our tents would get moved around during the night while we were asleep and be in different areas of the site, and no one would wake up while it was happening. Whoever was on watch would fall asleep, and would be found still sleeping when the sun came up. On one of the last days, we all woke up outside of our tents around the campfire. At this point, we were all scared shitless, and were trying to get back as fast as possible. It was at this point that my friend decided to tell everybody about the pictures, and to our horror, we see our sleeping bodies, some taken very close to our faces. The last one was of the friend who the camera belonged to's sleeping face, only this time it had a bone-white hand cupping his chin.
We estimated that we had 2 more days of hiking left, so we hurried our asses up and tried to get out as fast as possible. We found a good spot to camp, hopefully for the last time. The next morning, we awoke on the ground, in a meadow away from our campsite. We lost a lot of time looking for our campsite, and when we got back we found that most of our gear was shredded, including our tents. Someone miraculously managed to find the car keys, and we took our food that we had left hanging in a tree and continued on as fast as we could. Going as fast as we could, we got to the Jeep after it had gotten dark, and since we were all so tired, all six of us piled in the car, locked the doors, and fell asleep withing minutes.
The next morning, we were awakened my someone knocking on the window. It was a cop, and he was asking what we were doing in an enclosed area. As we were explaining ourselves, he said that the whole area had been closed due to "abnormal animal activity". All sorts of animal carcasses had been found mutilated, and they closed the area down due to safety concerns. When asked why the police were handling this instead of the park rangers, the officer paused and looked away. The awkward silence was interrupted by my friend pointing out that there were about a dozen other cars in the parking lot, all with flat tires. We piled out of the van, and saw that our own tires had been slashed. At this point, the cop comes clean and says that there's actually a manhunt in the area, but they're not sure what exactly they're dealing with. A lot of hikers had been going missing, and several had turned up dead during the last week. My friend then remembers the pictures on his camera and hands it to the cop. The cop's face suddenly goes blank, and he hands back the camera. I
t’s a photo that was taken inside the car the night before. Partially visible in the last photo, which is of my friend’s sleeping face, like some kind of party photo where the taker holds the camera at arm’s length to get himself in, is the right half of a pure white face with black holes for eyes and a mouth full of sharpened animal-like teeth.
