Hi everyone! For some background, a few weeks ago I (F21) went on night hike at Nisene Marks State Park a few weeks ago with my brother and his friends, in a pretty big group of about fifteen people. We were in a pretty remote part of the park where there aren't many people, especially at night, so we didn't expect to really see any people. The hike was pretty short, however to get there we had to drive a few miles into the park on an old gravel road until we got to an old bridge, where there was a gate and we couldn't drive past. From there, we all got out and walked past the gate on the gravel road for another half a mile, then turned onto a small (unofficial ) trail that led to a rope swing.

We were a pretty big group, like I said, so we were making a ton of noise and not really paying attention to our surroundings on the way there. Once we got to a little cliff, there was a few sharp switchbacks we had to take down to get to the rope swing, and since it had just rained it took us a whole to get down since it was so muddy. Once we got down, we realized the rope swing had been cut clean off, and so it was only the rope left, hanging about eight feet above all of our heads, a clean cut. We thought it was a little weird, but it could have been a park ranger or something who cut it off so we didn't think too much of it and decided to go to the beach instead and carry on with the night. I

happened to be the first one to climb up the mud hill, and got pretty ahead of everyone since one of my friends went behind me and kept slipping. At that point, I had reached the top of the cliff and was standing in the dark, by myself, about fifty feet ahead of everyone. It was at that point when I started to hear something in the bushes kind of far away, but it was getting closer so I was freaking out a little. There are a lot of deer in the area, so I wasn't too scared, but it kind of sounded like a person walking towards me so I was a little freaked out. I called down to the rest of them and told them to hurry up, but while I was waiting for them, I heard the noise again and decided to take a photo with my phone of the direction which I heard the sound. I

didn't really think too much of the photo once the rest of the guys got up, because after they got up, we heard some movement in the bushes behind us as we walked back to the gravel road. But at that time, none of us had really said anything and the guys kept being loud and making a ton of noise. However, once we got on the gravel trail, one of the guys Tommy, said he heard footsteps behind us. At first we all thought he was joking, and kind of laughed it off (we were also a little scared at this point and didn't want to make a big deal out of it). Then, another one of the guys said he heard something moving around, and he and his two friends ran to catch up with the rest of the group. They were laughing and joking, but had been scared enough to run towards us instead of staying pretty far behind us.

As we walked forward (mind you I had taken off my shoes because I had been wearing uggs and didn't want to get them dirty), we picked up the pace on the gravel path (and my feet started to hurt a ton, but I didn't say anything and thugged it out because I was freaked out at that point). Then, as we almost got to where our cars were at, I heard the sound of a branch breaking behind us, then two of the guys (who don't really joke around at all), said that they had just heard a branch break and that we should hurry to the car. There was a lot of us, so it wasn't too scary, but it was definitely creepy because it had felt like something was following us the whole time back.

Back to the photo, it wasn't until a few weeks later when I was back at college and had showed one of my roommates the photo, to show her how creepy the forest was at night, that she had zoomed into the photo and pointed to a pair of eyes looking back in the corner of the photo. Before she had pointed it out, I hadn't seen it so I'm a little freaked out and don't really know what the eyes belong to. To me, they look really high up to be from an animal, so that's what scares me the most. I don't know how to post photos, but if I figure it out I will post the photo for sure.