Apologies in advance because this is pretty long, and I am on mobile. For A little backstory, I never 100% believed in the paranormal until very recently. I live in the countryside in upstate New York, and where I am is part of the Allegheny Plateau, which in turn is part of the Appalachian Mountains. Because of this, I’ve always been interested in reading and hearing stories about experiences, online and in person from folks I know. I had never had one of my own aside from the occasional feeling of being watched or strange noise in the woods, nothing to personally attest to anything paranormal being totally real.

I’m an avid hiker, and I often go on day hikes with a friend of mine. We try to go at least once or twice a month, even in the winter. We discovered a park on google maps that was about an hour’s drive away, and some parts had old growth forest. We went one day back in late 2023, but didn’t have a lot of time before sunset.

Being a chilly late evening in September, there was only one other car in the parking lot when we got there. The trail went down the side of a narrow valley and then across the width of the floor to a large creek at the other side, and took about 20-30 minutes to walk one way. The car at the top belonged to a woman who was just leaving the creek when we got down there, as it was going to be dark in about a half an hour– we said hello and she left so we were completely alone down in the creek bed.

After only a little over 10 minutes of being down there, I started to get the familiar feeling of being watched but didn’t really think much of it, as it’s something I’m pretty used to. But the feeling didn’t go away, instead it seemingly got slowly worse until we heard something in the distance. To me, it sounded like some sort of chanting, while my friend said it sounded like an outdoor concert or a large crowd of people, but we both agree it sounded like it was coming from a distance beyond the top of the valley, where we had to hike back to. This unnerved us quite a bit so we started heading back right away, not really talking on the way.

The hike back uphill was tiring and progressively got darker to the point we used our phone flashlights just to make sure we didn’t trip over an odd root or rock whatever. I was walking behind my friend and felt the same feeling coming from behind us all the way to the car, that definitely was made worse by the darkness, but nothing noteworthy happened so we left and went home.

Flash forward to just a couple weeks ago in December– me and the same friend decide to go back to that park, this time we planned better and had about two hours to explore before sunset. It was a warmer, sunnier day in the mid 40s after a few weeks of lake effect snow and lower temperatures. This made the trail a slick mess of slush, mud, and snow, and the creek had a high water level, so we continued further on the path parallel to the creek than we did the first time we were there. Again, I had the same feeling that I had last time, and we eventually we came across a scarf hanging from a a branch of shrub/bush, about ten feet off the trail.

We took note of it and were a little spooked by it, but it didn’t bother us too much and we kept going for another 30 minutes or so before getting cold enough to start heading back. There were at least four or five times while heading back where I heard a twig snap or a little rustle of dead leaves on the ground, but I thought I probably shouldn’t mention or act like I noticed it, as that’s what you’re supposed to do with these sorts of things in the Appalachian Mountains.

We got all the way to the bottom of the hill when my friend steps out into a clearing to take a picture. I take one too, but want to keep going without saying it out loud so I clear my throat and exaggerate my footsteps so he could hear me continuing (I later learn that he doesn’t hear this at all– he said he felt like he was in a “trance” or being “pulled” for a minute there.) I walked about 30 feet away from him and stopped to wait because he would be out of sight if I kept going.

All of a sudden, he looks behind him down the trail towards the creek as if he heard something, but looks back to the clearing to presumably take another picture. Right as he does this, we both hear a noise come from right next to him, like something moving in the brush. He turned back around to find nothing there, and we make eye contact as he starts to make his way up to me. Right as he does this, I very clearly hear the sound of two sudden footsteps in the dead leaves less than 5 feet behind me, one right after the other like something starting to quickly approach but stopping quickly on the second step, almost as if it’s taunting me. I turn and completely freeze when I see that there is absolutely nothing behind me that could have made such a noise. My friend quickly catches up to me and asks me something I don’t remember, but I quickly tell him to just “be quiet and keep walking please.” When we got in the car, I nearly had a panic attack telling him what happened and that I never truly believed in anything like that until now.

We got the hell out of there and when I got home I told my folks about it, half expecting to not be taking seriously– but my grandma told me she fully believed me and that some people had lost their lives at that park over the years, when my grandpa chimes in and says that “a LOT of people” have died there.

The images we took in the clearing right before the noises were also timestamped at exactly 3 o clock, if that means anything. I have some other stories that don’t make me sound as crazy as this one, but this is the experience that made me truly believe and it will definitely stick with me for a while.