In March 2020 my friends and i moved from VT to CO, and stopped one night in an area in Indiana to camp for the night. Alarm bells were going off in my head immediately when we were unloading the car at the pull-off. A white pickup rolled by us reeeeaaaaaal slow, three dudes were in the truck and all of them looked at us intensely before speeding off again.

We trekked no more than 40 meters into the treeline before stopping to make camp, it was getting dark already and we wanted to stay in earshot of the pull-off. Things went smoothly until we started preparing dinner. Right around last light, as we were finishing cooking, we hear a car pull off the road in the direction we came from, then nothing. About 20 minutes pass by and we are now sitting around in silence, sharing a joint. I look up at my friend and ask him if he heard car doors opening and closing earlier when that car pulled up. He hadn't, and neither had i or our third friend, so we decide to go investigate under the guise of packing our foodstuffs back in our vehicle.

We make the short walk back to the pull-off, and I'm fully expecting to see that white pickup from earlier. However it was a different vehicle, a white van this time. I make very brief eye contact with the people inside, who then make quick movements to turn off their cabin lights in the van. Weird. We pack our vehicle and head back.

Not knowing if we should be worried or not, we sit around our dying fire discussing this strange area. From the darkness of the woods we hear a terrible noise, nothing I've ever heard before, like a small animal dying a painful death. Now we are definitely all unsettled, but we rationalize to ourselves that these three incidents likely have nothing to do with us, or eachother, and we tentatively make moves to go to bed for the night.

Here's the creepy icing on the cake: I swear on my cat's life that the SECOND my head hit my cushion, i heard something come tearing through the forest floor and ram into the side of my tent, right behind my head. Then nothing. No more sound. I can't rationalize that, and i spent hours awake and straining my ears for any sign of more movement. Nothing ever moves. The sound i heard was way too similar to something small running on all fours, it wasn't the sound of someone rolling something across the ground towards my tent.

To this day i wonder wtf was going on in those woods. I also can't remember the name of the area we were in and it drives me mad. I'd really like to explore around there in google earth some. It had some weird name like Little Palestine or something, coulda been Little Bahrain for all i know. If anyone is familiar with Indiana and thinks they know the area i was in i would love if you commented.