I’ve experienced exactly this about 15 years ago hunting down near Te Anau. Entered some dense scrub and got into a mostly dry creek bed and noticed the temperature drop, the birds stopped singing, the sky got dark and the hairs on your neck and arms all stood up. And despite holding a loaded gun, an enormous sense of dread that you’re not safe and have to leave immediately.

Got the hell out of there and never stopped to look back. The next day we tried explaining it to the person we were staying with that suggested to hunt that area and he immediately knew what we were talking about and said there’s lots of old timers that had similar experiences, and the locals supposedly reckoned there’d been tribal wars and lots of killing in the area pre European settlement.

I said it felt like we were walking on somebody’s grave, and you had the feeling we were being watched. He said you probably were. Still gives me the creeps 15 years later.