I’m now retired but I used to be a policeman, at one stage I worked in the East side of Newcastle upon Tyne. I was on night duty (10pm till 6 am) one summer night in 1991, when about 3am my partner and I got a radio call to attend an alarm being activated at a local social club, the radio operator said he’d telephoned the key holder who would meet us at the scene. This happened, and he opened the locked up building, on entering he looked at the alarm panel and reported the alarm was activated in the downstairs gents toilet (bathroom or restroom) we entered the main hallway, the gents toilet door was facing us, just then it went VERY cold, this was midsummer and we’re in shirtsleeves, at that point a man, about 5’ 6” in height ( my wife is 5’6” ), he was dressed in a black tuxedo with a black bow tie, his hairstyle reminded me of the 1940s - 1950s, he was looking straight in front of him, we were standing to his right side, he never looked at us, not once, just walked forward about three paces, I suddenly remembered why we were there and I quickly moved forward to apprehend him, as I put my hand on his right shoulder, he just faded away, he completely disappeared in front of the three of us.

We were left standing there, shocked, and confused, we couldn’t explain what we’d just witnessed. The key holder finally said “That was a ghost, we’ve just seen a fucking ghost haven’t we?”

We quickly looked around and finding nothing else we locked up again. We reported it as a fault on the system, we knew that we’d be totally ridiculed by our colleagues on the shift.
We didn’t even record it in our pocket note books as we were supposed to.

My partner and I have not spoken about it ever. The key holder, who by day worked as a barman in that club, resigned the next day and never returned. The building was demolished in 1996, it no longer exists. But I can’t help but wonder if that spirit still walks that area. Three grown, sober, and serious men, two of us professional police officers saw and felt this, it’s a perfectly true story, I swear by all that’s holy. I later reported the story in a force magazine that was looking for stories from past officers, I was later contacted by another retired policeman who retired years before me. He told me that the MC at that club always wore a tuxedo back in the day and one of them died of a heart attack in the gents toilet, he actually did the sudden death (coroner’s) report. This is all true. I forgot to mention that this ’figure’ we saw looked perfectly real and solid when seen by us, he wasn’t transparent or shimmering, nothing like that. I did get a name from the old sergeant that dealt with the sudden death, I will not mention it, I believe there are still living relatives in the area, and the past is the past, let sleeping dogs lie.

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Katie’s comments:

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Fellow campers and hikers of reddit what is the creepiest/scariest/unexplainable event that happened to you while in the woods. I remember being little and hearing footsteps outside my trailer and the rest of my family was hunting, scared the shit out of me kept looking outside and time and time again nothin was out there but it sounded like a grown man just walking

Follow-up comment by u/MasteringTheFlames:

Scary? Or creepy? To me, those are two very different things. I'll share both stories with you...

Story # 1:

Several years ago, I loaded a bunch of camping gear onto my bicycle and spent the better part of the next seven months riding 5,300 miles (8,500 km) around the western U.S. solo. At night, I most often preferred to wild camp. Rather than paying to sleep on the ground in a campground, I would just find somewhere to disappear into the woods, somewhere people were unlikely to find me and even less likely to care that I was there.

The forest, I quickly learned, makes for far from a quiet night's sleep. After the first few weeks of this lifestyle, I had come to find comfort in the droning of thousands of crickets and toads. It was always a highlight of my night —though not particularly uncommon— to hear the yips and howls of a distant pack of coyotes, and I fondly recall one night when I was lulled to sleep by two owls, one on either end of my tent, hooting back and forth. If nothing else, it wouldn't take much of a breeze to stir music from the tree canopies.

A bit over a month into the trip, I was way out in the middle of nowhere in western Montana. After a full day of cycling on incredibly sparse roads, I found somewhere to set up camp for the night. Went through my usual bedtime routine. Pitch the tent, eat dinner, write my final journal entry of the day's events, study maps for the coming days. Living outdoors all day every day, my sleep schedule more or less synched with the sun, and so I laid down in bed shortly after dusk.

That's when I made a disturbing observation. There was not a single cricket chirping nor toad croaking, certainly no owls. There wasn't even the slightest breeze to rustle the dry leaves of early autumn still clinging to the trees. It was truly and completely silent. And that was terrifying. I can only describe it as the loudest silence I've ever felt. It was as if the entire forest was hiding from an equally silent predator. Suddenly the occasional snapping of a twig —a common sound normally lost in the cacophony— rang out like a gunshot. I slept terribly that night, and I'll never forget the immense relief I felt with the first bird song of the pre-dawn hour.

Story # 2:

So that was my creepiest night. What about actual fear for my safety and well-being? That came a month or so later on the same trip. I was somewhere in southern Washington State, with my sights set on Portland, Oregon. Again, I was just wild camping in the woods. And I started coming down with food poisoning. I spent the whole night tossing and turning and leaning out the door of the tent to vomit. I'd finally throw up, then use some water from one of my bottles to rinse out my mouth. Drink some water to help replenish the fluids I'd lost, then lay back down. Feeling better, I'd get a couple hours sleep before waking up once again feeling nauseous.

Come 4:00 AM, I dreaded the thought of getting back on the bike, I simply didn't have the energy for it. But what other option did I have? Just wait alone in the woods and pray I recover quickly? Besides, I'd used up all my water through the night. I had no choice but to get on the road. Looking at my maps, there was a town not too far away with a motel where I could put myself up for a night of proper rest. It would be 30 miles, or 50 km. A reasonable half day for me, under ideal conditions.

Right as the sun came up, it started raining, so I waited out the brief 20 minute storm in the tent. Rain stopped, I took down the tent, loaded up the bike, and hiked it back to the road. Get on, start pedaling... And something feels weird. It's a flat tire. Just my luck, right? But I had the tools, spare parts, and knowledge to fix it, so I get to work. In my less than ideal mental state, it took far longer to fix than it had any right to, and my the time it was back together and holding air, it had started raining again. No option other than to turn on my lights, put on my jacket, and just ride through it.

The words "overwhelming hopelessness" don't feel big enough, but I don't know how else to summarize that day. I was cold and wet. I was hungry, but didn't want to put too much into my still upset stomach. I was dehydrated, remember I'd used up all my water the previous night. And I was tired in every sense of the word; sleep deprived, physically aching, mentally exhausted. Every rotation of the pedals felt like a feat of Herculean strength, but somehow I continued to find that strength. I made it to the motel, took a long hot shower, called my mom, the slept for 13 hours straight.

Long story slightly shorter, I woke up the next morning feeling surprisingly good, and managed to outrun the food poisoning for a day or two to Portland. Eventually it caught up to me while I was out at a museum, but one rest day on the toilet of the hostel got it all out of my system for good. In hindsight, I'm just thankful the shits waited until I was back in civilization!

The flat tire and the rain, that was just demoralizing. But that night before? That was without a doubt the most scared I have ever been for my own safely while camping. I honestly had no idea how I was going to get myself out of that one.

TL;DR Both while riding a bicycle across the US, the creepiest was just a night camping in a dead silent forest in the middle of nowhere, Montana. In terms of actual fear for my safety, it was a month or so later in Washington State, when I came down with food poisoning and spent the night vomiting while alone in the woods rather than in a proper campground. 10/10 would still recommend cycling across a continent!

Katie’s comments:

Story # 1:

• Location: the western U.S. // way out in the middle of nowhere in western Montana

Story # 2:

• Location: Montana

Just a random curiosity, if anyone believes that stuff 😂

Follow-up comment by u/Who_Cares99:

Just about every cop in my hometown would disagree with you lol. Very historic town, lots of weird shit happening.

One of the stories I’ve been told was about an old mansion that’s basically a museum now and has a night guard. They get called to a burglar alarm, guard has secured the entrance and nobody has left. They clear this whole creepy ass mansion and find one closet door (maintenance or some other utility closet) that’s locked. The alarm company has contacted them and confirmed that there is a keypad for the alarm in this closet, and that there was a false entry on the keypad, meaning someone actually put in the wrong codes. As you may have guessed, they opened the closet and nobody was there despite the whole building having been systematically cleared and nobody having entered or exited (and the door having remained locked)

Another fun one is how an officer mentioned that going into a spot in the Walmart at night would usually result in him finding his radio off or on the wrong channel. That Walmart is no longer 24 hour, and the specific area he was in was the site of an orphanage in which every single child was killed in a hurricane.

We have the typical false alarm calls in my town, but one location consistently gets interior motion detection alarms. This is probably the weakest story I have, but the school has long been said to be haunted by just about every student that’s gone there, it has a graveyard (it’s a church school), and has historically been a nunnery I believe.

There are tons more that I just can’t think of right now. Each of these stories was told to me by a different officer and separately corroborated by another officer, I just remember them so well because multiple people felt they were worth sharing.

I’m on the fence about believing in the paranormal, but it does seem like some trippy shit happens.

Katie’s comments:

• might be worth looking into more if there’s more stories and/or context OP shares elsewhere
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