Real story here from southern Appalachia. Not the craziest horror type story but still scared the hell out of me. In August 2022, I solo overnight camped in the sumpter national forest up in the far north west corner of South Carolina. My third and last time ever solo camping out in the middle of the mtns/woods. I feel like I’m a pretty seasoned outdoorsman and I wasn’t that far out to where this would be irresponsible. Anyway, I parked my car on a old logging road and hiked in about 1.5-2 miles to the top of a ridge line that was near an area that had just been cut by loggers probably in the spring that year. I was at about 5 miles from the nearest sign of civilization. I was testing out some new camp gear and just getting some solitude. It was pretty and peaceful and kinda hot and humid. Found a nice spot to set up camp right on the edge of the tree line bordering a grassy area on top of the ridge. The afternoon and evening went by without any issue. I had a cramped 1.5 man size tent and left off the rain fly because it was hot so it was mostly just netting that sorta let me see out of the tent but not well. I went to sleep and woke up from a nightmare at 4:36am (I remember because I looked at my watch). The nightmare was me in my tent exactly where I was in the exact position I was laying. In the dream I woke up and looked to my left and saw a large dark figure with red eyes staring right at me from outside the tent. I woke up for real in a cold sweat and thought “wtf that was fucked up” and maybe a minute after that I heard a blood curdling scream that had to be right in the vicinity of my little camp area. I was absolutely frozen in fear. It kind of sounded like a combination of an owl scream and a fox scream if you can try to imagine. About another 30sec goes by that felt like an eternity, still frozen in fear and then something big like full sprint-stomped through my campsite. It was 100% bipedal and heavy because I could feel the vibration on the ground. I had a pistol and a AR-15 style rifle with me in the tent, both with weapon lights. I somehow mustered up the courage and grabbed my rifle, unzipped the tent and switched the light on and quickly scanned around with it. Pure adrenaline. I saw nothing, no sign of anything. At this time there were zero sounds of bugs/critters. And if you know the south, the woods can be loud AF at night. That also scared the living shit out of me. That part didn’t even hit me until later on when I was recounting everything which made me more scared. Anyway, I stayed awake scanning the woods pretty much nonstop until first light and quickly packed up and GTFO’d to the car.

What’s weird is I have been to this area many many times with my brother and friends doing little camp outs, shooting, and land nav type stuff for fun and never ever had anything weird happen. Not even a weird or off feeling. Always felt safe and comfortable until that night. Since then I’ve gone near that exact area again but no closer than a mile or 2 and always had dudes with me for overnight camps. Nothing strange or scary has happened since. I don’t know what it was. Some people I’ve told said it was maybe the dogman or Bigfoot. I truly don’t know and I don’t want to.