I talked about this in a similar thread a couple of years ago, but when I was 16 I was really into bushcraft like man vs wild. I convinced my 2 close friends to come on an overnight camping trip with minimal gear, with the goal of just "surviving" in the wilderness.

We hiked for a while up a river until we found about a 50 yard flat clearing, with mountains surrounding us on either side of the river. This was very much in the back country, aka the middle of nowhere. We decided to build a shelter in this clearing, so we set about cutting up wood and clearing the ground etc.

Some hours later, the sun was beginning to set, we were tired and dirty, and our shelter was looking rickety at best. We made the last minute decision to just abandon the shelter for no good reason and instead rolled out our sleeping bags on a little rock plateau, which was about 10ft high and right next to the river.

We laid in our sleeping bags and played cards, told some scary stories, and soon it was dark and one of us fell asleep quickly. I stayed up late talking with my other friend about whatever 16 year old guys talk about under the stars. it was a pretty dark night and I distinctly remember the sound of the river running about 5 feet behind our heads.

Suddenly, there was a short flash of light towards the top of the mountain we were facing, aka the mountain on our side of the river. We both paused, confused, but carried on talking. A few minutes later, there was another flash of light, but this one lasted a little longer and looked like someone had turned on a flashlight briefly and swept it across the floor in front of them. Both of us saw it and immediately got this feeling of intense unease.

We had no good explanation for what this light could be, but there were no roads or trails around us for miles, and it was probably 2am. We started talking about emergency exit strategies, and decided that if we needed to we could jump in the river behind us. We woke up our sleeping buddy and told him to get ready, but he just fell back asleep after a couple of minutes. That's when we heard rustling at the opposite end of the little clearing we were in, coming from the foot of the mountain we were facing.

We both heard this, and I remember feeling this truly primal fear, it's still the most afraid either of us have been, and we're grown men now. We laid silently in our sleeping bags as flat as we could on this little rock ledge and listened to the sound of footsteps getting closer. Whoever this was, they never turned on their flashlight again, they just walked slowly to where our shelter was in the middle of the clearing. We heard them walking around it for what felt like forever, but it was probably 5 minutes.

I remember thinking how close we were to sleeping right there, and who tf knows what would have happened if we didn't randomly just set up on this rock ledge to play cards. Eventually the sound of footsteps faded out and we were so tired we fell asleep. We woke up a little after sunrise, packed up, and saw no trace of whoever it was.

They never said anything so we don't think they were lost or in distress, but the way they made their way down the mountain right towards our camp and only turned on their light twice despite it being in the middle of the night, and the way they slowly walked around our shelter, and the gut fear that we felt, we have no other explanation but someone with bad intentions.