13 Adventure Stories With Unreal Plot Twists Worthy of a Hollywood Blockbuster

Walking in the forest and being amidst the wonders of nature is a long-prescribed antidote for monotony and health problems. That being said, not all trail adventures are something to look back fondly upon, given some can be downright terrifying. The jungles are home to mysterious things and happenings, as these Redditors found out through personal experience. The plot twists are even more bizarre!

1. Vampire trees.

I was hiking with some friends, just off the trail near our camping spot. The woods suddenly opened up to a small clearing. In the center was a very large, white oak with no leaves. All the other trees were almost in a perfect circle, as if keeping away from it. Staring at it gave a very creepy vibe. We started heading back to our tents, but the hike seemed to take three times as long going back. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the big white oak was right behind us the whole way. Easy-Fixer / Reddit

Another Redditor provided an explanation:

Albino trees are a thing. In forests with connected root systems, they’re basically vampires. They take resources from the root systems to survive. This also keeps young trees from growing up well around it. pyr*** / Reddit

2. Things that go splash in the dark.

My friend and I decided to go for a late night hike, roughly 10 o’clock. There was a bridge we stopped at 30 minutes in, taking a break. While sitting on the bridge, we heard a loud twig snap nearby. It definitely wasn’t a squirrel. Sounded heavier. I started panicking and insisted we continue hiking.

As we continued on the trail, we suddenly heard about four distinct splashes on the lake nearby. They were heavy. As if they were 20 pound stones, not pebbles or anything of that nature. At that point, we were terrified and basically fast walked out of there. I kept telling my friend to keep her voice down, as if that would help, since our footsteps were loud against all the leaves and rocks.

We had no idea if it was an animal or someone was following us. It was pitch black and we only had our pathetic phone flashlights. I vomited when we got to the trail exit. We never did night hikes again. Never found out what made those noises. justag**27 / Reddit

Another Redditor offered an explanation:

Probably a beaver. I fish at night on the nearby river quite often and when a beaver slaps the water with his tail while swimming it sounds exactly like a huge rock being thrown into the water. Vulsh74 / Reddit

3. Ghost house.

I once took a hike around some trails that were near to me (I’m surrounded by woods). At one point, there was a fork in the trail and I sign with an arrow on it pointing to one of the trails, so I decided to follow it. After about a half hour of walking I came upon a very old looking home (this was in the dead middle of the woods) with lights on, it looked like there were people in there but no one was moving.

I NOPED right the heck out of there and made my way home where I got my phone and checked Google Earth, and found the trail but no building. I went back the next day in the daylight and the trail was a dead end with absolutely nothing there. It still bothers me to this day. Psychozillogical / Reddit

4. Scream.

My little brother and I were tossing a baseball around near dusk at the bottom of our property, 30 wooded mountain acres WAY in the middle of nowhere. It had gotten dark enough that we were just about to call it quits when we heard the single most horrifying scream we’ve ever heard — before or since — from the trees just beyond the edge of the clearing.

Imagine a woman screaming in mortal agony, writhing in the most wretched torment imaginable, every tortured scream from horror movies, war movies, anything you’ve ever heard; nothing compared to this. Even now, decades removed from hearing it, the hair on my arms and neck stands up just thinking of it, and it’s made even worse by the realization of what it actually was:

A mountain lion. Full-grown female mountain lions scream loudly when they’re in heat, and it sounds like a human woman being torn to pieces by the devil himself. To hear that, two kids alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere, was about as terrifying as it gets. CaptainNemo42 / Reddit

5. Brain freeze.

My buddy and I were riding bikes out to meet some friends who had already set up the camp outside of town. We had work late, so we didn’t hit the trail until after the sun was already going down, but we had some lights on and a pretty good view of the trail ahead for the speed we were riding. Even though it’s summer, there weren’t really any other trail users this time of night, so I was a little startled to see a figure catch the light as we moved along.

As we got closer, this figure seemed less familiar, less human. After a few more moments, my headlight illuminated a shriveled fleshy puppet-like thing jerking around about 250 feet away. Skinny and pale and featureless. I didn’t really have any time to react, so I just kept riding, I figured if it was a wild animal, I’d be better off moving than standing still anyway. At this moment we also recognized that it’s startling puppet-like movement was in fact an awkward, jerking gait, this thing was running straight towards us at a decent pace.

We had no time to strategize, we just held our line as this pale, bony nightmare grew ever closer. A moment later, the image finally resolved in the cold light of our portable LEDs: a completely nude, hairless jogger in the night. He passed us by wordlessly, no doubt as surprised as we were to see someone on the trail so late at night.

It was such an unexpected encounter that my brain just could not accept the rational possibility, and instead I nearly caught a heart attack thinking I’d get jumped by a real cryptid that night. Return_to_Crab / Reddit

6. In the middle of nowhere.

My brother, a friend of ours, and I were hiking in the woods. Quite deep in and about an hour from any roads and even more so from any buildings. Came across a house that looked like a tornado had hit it.

Beams and drywall everywhere. Even found a toaster. No roads or trails to this house, but it looked like newer construction. We explored for a bit, then headed back out.

Seemed pretty straight forwards to backtrack to it later on to explore some more, but we have not been able to find it again. We have searched quite seriously for it too, covering quite some area in the area we thought it was in. The odd thing was that it was just the house that had the damage. None of the trees, bushes, or dirt had any sign of damage. zerothepyro / Reddit

7. Nightmare grove.

I was exploring a friend’s countryside house. I had been there multiple times, and we usually played in the forest that was at the back of the terrain, pretty standard stuff like catch or just stick fight. Though one day, when we were up to our usual shenanigans we came across a scarecrow like thing, it had a clown suit for clothes and a deer head.

His Grandfather later told us after we were scared out of our wits that it was some tradition the locals did to keep the bad spirits away. Deep down, I hope that was it. xbox_pleb / Reddit

8. Lucky shot.

One time I was camping with my family in a national park that also had an area for hunting, so throughout the day you could hear shots in the distance. Around midday, we heard another shot and a few seconds later we heard a whirring/whistling followed by something flying past our heads and landing in the dirt with a heavy impact.

One of the bullets must have travelled in a perfect arc to fly all the way to our campsite, just barely missing us. Must have been only inches away because I felt wind/air in front of my face as it flew past. Half_Smashed_Face / Reddit

9. Predator and prey.

My fiancé and I were hanging out in a clearing after walking the trails for a bit. There’s nothing but trees around us and the trails themselves that wind through the rest of this park. Not many people passed by, just a few bikers and a family every once in a while. After a while, though, things started to feel off. The birds had stopped singing, and I felt like there were eyes on us. Now, I have never seen much more than chipmunks, squirrels, and birds in this park, but there was no way I was getting that feeling of doom from a rodent.

My first thought is that we’re caught in the sights of some sort of predator. Where I lived in Michigan, people assumed cougars weren’t making a comeback. People were even trying to deny the presence of coyotes, even after several news segments with actual footage of said coyotes strolling through the city. I keep talking to my fiancé because I don’t want to worry him or sound like I’m crazy, but after several minutes, I hear twigs snapping.

I look up, and I’m greeted to the sight of something slowly inching through the surrounding trees. It’s bigger than a coyote, so I immediately freeze. A cougar’s stalking us, and there’s no one else around to help if it attacks us. My fiancé freezes too because hey, his fiancée is frozen in fear, eyes wide and locked on something behind him. I’m getting ready to urge him to turn around and slowly make his way over to me...and then a dog steps out from the trees.

Just a big ol’ mastiff of some sort, standing there with his tail wagging behind him. I breathe a sigh of relief, the dog’s called away by his owner who was further up the trails, and I got to finally tell my fiancé about how I thought we were seconds away from dying. rarestereocat / Reddit

10. Sticks and stones.

Belanglo State Forest south of Sydney is notorious for being the site of bad stuff in the early 90s. A few years back I was part of a large (1000+ people) Scout camp in the forest. It’s a nice spot, but it still feels odd, everyone knows the history of the place, even the kids are joking about the eeriness of the woods.

About 9pm, there’s a queue for the toilets, so I duck into the woods to relieve myself. About 30 meters into the trees, I look down and realize I’m standing in a small, scattered field of bones. It probably only took a few seconds for me to realize they were animal bones, but it was the longest few seconds of my life. yogorilla37 / Reddit

11. Siren call.

There was also the time I was backpacking with friends along the coast, early in the morning through chilly fog, having not seen other people in multiple days. Drifting in from the ocean, we started hearing these awful groaning sounds like the cries of the dead trying to lure us out to sea.

The sound kept growing with more and more voices joining in, getting closer... and then we realized the sound was coming from seals hanging out on a rock a little ways out. Combined with the smell of death coming from rotting seaweed, it was not a pleasant morning of hiking. TuxedoLab / Reddit

12. Crunch-crunch.

It was my first solo camping trip. I was alone, but only about 5 miles from the road, and I had just finished dinner. As I bedded down, I heard a “crunch,” that sounded like footsteps outside. I moved my head to try to figure out what direction they were coming from, and they stopped. I put my head back down, and a few minutes later, they started again. “Crunch-crunch!”

Again, I lifted my head to see what direction they were coming from, or whether it was close. Nothing. This cycle repeated a couple of times until I decided to turn over and open my tent flap to get a look around outside with the flashlight. I was expecting to see a person out there, walking around in the dark. I checked, but nothing. Saw nothing, heard nothing. Zipped up, put my head back down, tried to go back asleep.

Again, “crunch-crunch”. I lifted my head, it stopped. I tried to re-adjust, I looked outside again, I couldn’t find the source. It certainly wasn’t my heart, because that was thumping like mad. It stopped, but when I lay back down, it happened again. All night long. This kept me awake for hours that evening. I was terrified.

I felt that there was someone or something out there; who heard me move my head, and stopped walking, only to continue, when they thought I had fallen back asleep. Maybe past midnight; but eventually I fell asleep. The next morning, when I broke camp, I noticed that my head was over a gopher hole. Unknown author / Reddit

13. The walking things that follow you.

Every day, my friend and I used to walk in the woods. This was near his place. We’d hear the sound of footsteps alongside us, behind us, ahead of us, all around. It sounded like people walking in the woods. When we stopped, the sound would stop. If one of us walked and the other stood still, there was no sound of footsteps. We had to both walk.

This went on for years. We’d stand still and look everywhere and see nothing. Nothing but the trees. Take a few steps, and we’d immediately hear people walking around us. One day, we were walking down the road besides the woods, and heard the same noise. Terrified, we peered into the trees and saw a tiny, little bird. It was hopping in the leaves at exactly human walking pace.

2 years of worry about a 4-inch tall hopping bird. They didn’t live in my woods, but they were all over his woods. It was nice to solve a problem with a happy ending. mostlygray / Reddit

If you’ve had your fill of scary stories on things that go bump in the night in the wild, try the cityscape instead. Here are some heartwarming incidents people experienced at music concerts.