The Campfire Thread

[drcroc]

Well it's been a while, huh?  As time went on and we all went about our daily lives, I'm sure things changed and we all grew at least a little bit, which each of us ourselves now have stories of difficulties and personal triumphs in life.  I know I have some.  One thing that never changed for me though is that I'm very interested in stories about things which one could consider out of the ordinary, whether that being an encounter with strange persons or even an alien visitation.  Who really knows what we have all experienced over the years, unless we share with one another.  So do any of you have any good stories that would interest you to talk about?  I suppose they would be especially appropriate if they would be something you would tell while sitting next to an actual crackling campfire with your friends, but that requires a bit of imagination.

I'll start off with a weird one a few years ago.  I was living alone out in the country, only a few neighbors but we were all really spread out.  It was late and night, at least midnight, and I had been waiting a while for my friend to drop something off for me.  They hadn't come by before and GPS barely works out there so once I figured they were close I went outside under the carport and sat on the steps to wait for them to text me again.  It was raining pretty hard and there were big puddles everywhere on my old driveway, so it had been raining a while.  While sitting there I noticed a little light going on and off regularly in the neighbor's yard across the street.  It was way too dark to see anything, but I could tell this small light was slowly going on and off, shining on a metal shed on the right side of the yard from my perspective.  Not big or bright enough to be a mounted floodlight or any such thing, I did take notice of this light and started paying attention to it.  It wasn't moving at all though so eventually I tried to just write it off, for my peace of mind if nothing else.

Eventually my friend did show up and even though I still was thinking about that light, I just put it in the back of mind and talked to my friend and then he went on his way.  I went back inside but started figuring maybe this light I saw was malfunctioning, mounted on a storm cellar I never noticed or a pole next to the driveway.  Even though I did wonder about it I eventually went to bed and didn't think about it until sometime the next day when it was bright and sunny outside, so I made it a point to look in that yard when I left to go to the store.  There was not a pole or anything there next to the driveway where that light was, which leads me to believe there was in fact a person standing out there for an hour at least while I was paying attention, maybe longer, not moving, in a downpour, slowly blinking a flashlight on and off.  It still actually creeps me out now to think about it.  I never saw it again and before long someone moved in on a nearby piece of land and got a big white floodlight installed that turns on every night, which I'm sure deters people from doing such stuff.  I just wonder what was going on and if it was somehow related to my constant feeling of not actually being alone in that house or around it.

[Kestrel]

Oh hell yeah, I remember this thread on the original boards!

Well, I spent a lot of time living in Okinawa, Japan. If you know anything about the island, you'd know there was a massive battle that took place during the tail end of World War II. An estimated 150,000 troops were killed, and around an equal number of Okinawan civilians. This coupled with the Marine Corps' ravenous appetite for naval tradition and superstitions made the entire island a breeding ground for ghost stories.

Around the November 10th Marine Corps birthday celebrations, we'd throw big events where Marines would dress the part, just as we had looked in 1945, and throw a parade commemorating the lives lost during the Battle of Okinawa, of a way of us paying our respects to the Marines that came before us, and the tens of thousands of Okinawan slaves who were massacred by the Japanese. I was one of those Marines that got lucky enough to play dress up.

Spoiler:

Here's a photo of me from one of those years ^

Anyway, back to the superstition surrounding this jungle island. The base I had been on, Camp Hansen, was neatly placed right over the land where Marines started to take their first losses, and much of the base's infrastructure even today is based off of the locations of forward operating bases and dugouts that Marines had hastily but together during the battle. Many intersections, guard shacks, and gates were placed 70 years ago, paved over and rebuilt time and again. Legend has it that if you find yourself at one of the old closed down guard shacks at night, a Marine, dressed in 1940s dungarees just like the photo I posted will come ask you for lighter. Mind you, the Marine Corps is a cult, and extremely superstitious.

As a joke, a friend of mine suggested I dress myself up for Halloween one year and go stand by one of the old guard shacks at night, waiting for the PMO (military police) cars to come by to make their rounds in the hopes I'd scare the shit out of them. And so I did. Four about 4 hours between 11pm to 3am I stood at an abandoned, rotting out guard shack on the east side of base, waiting for someone to show so I could spring the trap on them. No one ever came. During Halloween night, when I expected everyone to be partying and drinking, it was completely dead. I nearly fell asleep a few times, and the last time my head and eyes bobbed back up from the brink of sleep, I saw him. Just across the gate from me, in the opposite guard shack, was another Marine, dressed exactly as I was, the sparks from his lighter illuminating his face as he lit a cigarette. A skinny white kid, short, with a real pointy face Helmet looked too big for him almost. Like flesh and blood, not ghostly looking at all, like I could walk over and touch him. He noticed me, giving me that "what the hell are you looking at?" face. I dropped my cigarette out of my mouth in disbelief and bent down to pick it up. When I lifted my head again he was gone.

Naturally, I told all of my friends about it, trying to figure out if it was real, or just a dream from being half asleep and (frankly) a little drunk. They all seemed to come to the conclusion of "if you go to the haunted guard shack at night of course you're gonna see a ghost".

[Kestrel]

I made the same post twice and can't figure out how to delete it. My bad. I totally believe in ghosts though.

[drcroc]

One time I was hanging out with a friend and watching Family Guy on DVD. This was a while back during school so we used to just hang out a lot and watch stuff or like play gamecube. Eventually one of us noticed a weird noise, kinda quiet so hardly distinguishable from the show, so we paused it and like got closer to what seemed to be the source of the noise somewhere below us. Once we got down close to the floor vent though, we realized it sounded like a little girl crying underneath their house out in the country. It was extremely spooky and still gives me chills honestly.

[Dirty Duck]

(Song for how this experience felt)

I'm working in North Wales right now and I just travelled back up after visiting home for the weekend. For the second week in a row my initial train ran behind meaning I missed my connection. Last week this meant I had to get a taxi but since I changed hotels on Friday to a different area it turned out this time I could still salvage my journey as if I changed my route I could be dropped at a train station 30 minutes walk away from the hotel via rail replacement bus. I catch the bus just fine and it drops me at the station where I am the only one to get off. The station has been closed for some time due to repairs so there's no signs of life anywhere. My maps tell me the route involves me actually crossing the train tracks so I open the gate, cross, and close the gate on the other side.

The route I'm going down has no lights at all so I get my phone out and turn on the torch but, as phone torches tend to, it just sort of casts a very unfocused light that only illuminates what's immediately in front of me. There's no pavement on the path I'm walking and either side I'm flanked by trees. Eventually I reach a bridge that goes over the river which is incredibly windy and choppy, and from up there I can see just how far away I am from anything even remotely resembling society as there are only lights in buildings in the far off distance. As I come down from the bridge I'm now on an even more remote feeling path, with the light of the train station that was behind me now left on the other side of the bridge. The map shows that I'm essentially walking in a straight line for the entire half hour so I carry on. Bats are flying overhead and I'm recording to my girlfriend-Captain's Log style-and saying it's actually kind of scary and how I wouldn't want to bump into anyone out here.

Almost as if the universe heard me, shortly after I said that a glimmering light appears far far down the pathway. I'm instantly like what the fuck is that light? I quickly conclude it must be another person with their torch like me and while I'm a little spooked by that I tell myself its a path, it must be used sometimes...though I do wonder what reason someone would have to come this way down a path to the closed train station, especially after the final rail replacement bus. The light is very bright and moves quite strangely, almost like a star flickering in the sky. I say to myself again, what the fuck is that light?! I tell myself it's probably a bike light, but the way it moves is more like someone walking. After a while It's gotten a fair bit closer, though it's still quite far away. Just as I'm gearing myself up for passing someone in the next couple of minutes the light suddenly disappears. I don't like that one bit as I'm then like, why would the light go out? If it's someone coming towards me why would they turn it off? I figure it could have ran out of batteries. I carry on walking-a bit nervous to now bump into someone who isn't signposted by a light of their own-but I never encounter anyone. I pass the distance where the light should have been and see nothing. I eventually reach the end of the path a fair bit afterwards where I come out next to some disused railway lines and what claims to be the Railway Social Club, though from what I can see it's just a disused signal house.

I'm not very skittish as a person but this definitely spooked me a bit on my own in the ass-end of nowhere.