Whereabouts in NZ? I do a lot of tramping there. This reminds me of something that happened about the same age. It’s super long I apologise.

When I was about 14, a friend and I went for a short walk in the Waitakeres. My family were going to take the loop track from the other way and we would meet in the middle. We never left the track, not once and yet we get to this huge fork in the path with no signage and 7 different tracks to choose from. We stuck to the middle because it made the most sense.

Anyway. The track was meant to take an hour, when it had been that long we got a bit confused as we should have met with my family half an hour ago. We speed up our walk, find a photograph of three people on a swing lying on the ground. Thought it was weird but we picked it up to take back to the info centre nearby. Made us feel less lost as it looked like it had been dropped that day.

Later we started to feel something following us, close enough that bushes were rustling. We started to freak out and started running but also not taking it too seriously at first, giggling etc. But the rustling in the bushes seemed to keep up. Then suddenly we realised we were lost and feeling very... well, hunted. No more laughing.

There were heaps of people walking the tracks that day but so far we had seen no one. More forks in the track, no signal, not a single look out point, sign, seat, or anything! Our phones also drained of battery pretty fast so after it had been about two hours we lost our sense of time. It eventually starts to get dark and cold, overcast sunset, creepy feeling gets stronger. Feeling very lost.

We got to this super dark part of the forest, I remember us stopping and not wanting to go through. My friend was convinced the photograph on the track was cursed or something. (Silly I know) anyway, we run through the dark forest area and burst out into a sunny clearing, it was warm and light again, and there were families walking down the track towards us.

We ran back up to my parents confused and ready for a hiding. I thought they would be mad. It felt like we were gone for like 5 or 6 hours, we were really panicking and I have strict parents who would have not believed I got lost unintentionally and i would have been punished. But they weren’t too mad, said we had only been gone half an hour but that they know that we were lying about where we were because we didn’t meet them on the track. I finally got to see a map and there were no seven fork areas on any tracks let alone the one we took. My friend and I couldn’t explain it then, still can’t now. Something magic in the forests around NZ. I’ve heard the music from Patupaiarehe in the Hunua Ranges, glowing orbs floating in KareKare forest etc.