This happened a few years back but it's been bugging me recently.
I practically grew up in the local woods and forest. I knew all of the main walking trails, and a good bit of land off those trails. I spend my childhood and teen years wandering through the forest from breakfast until dark with my best friend.
My now-ex was also a country person and spent a lot of time in his local forests (he was from a couple of hours away), so I thought it'd be a good date to take my dogs and go hiking through the forest. We went off the main trails pretty quickly and started doing what I'd done through my teens - following small streams and climbing up the small waterfalls (2ft - 8ft tall). It was a nice peaceful hike through beautiful forest.
We'd been out hiking for 6 or 7 hours and it was time to start heading home. We thought sunset was about an hour off. So we climbed up the next waterfall and emerged in a valley with steep but climable sides. Roughly 100ft further down the stream ahead of us was a large brick bridge. It was quite distinctive and memorable and clearly had a good view down along our little valley.
We headed up the side of the valley and paused about halfway up because we started to realise something was wrong. Personally, I noticed the fact it was silent. As in, completely dead silent, first. The forest prior to the climb had been vibrant and alive with birds, insects, the usual forest stuff. My now-ex noticed the spiders first. The ground was covered in them. Thousands of small black spiders scurrying about over the dirt covered in dead pine needles. At this point the dogs were staying closer than they had been (they were terriers, they roamed pretty far and wide), but they seemed happy and chilled. As we paused and looked around us, my now-ex noticed that all of the trees on that bank were either dead or dying. They were all relatively young too, mostly pine, a few young oak.
That seemed odd and there was a growing sensation of wrongness, so we headed on towards the wide mud track. On the other side of the mud track was a small very dense, very dark, woodland. The trees weren't the same pine, yew, and oak as the rest of the forest. I'm not sure what they were, but they grew so close together that it was almost pitch black inside of that space. We became keenly aware of a malevolent presence watching us from those woods. I called the dogs close and we put them on their leads and we headed away from the brick bridge as that's the direction we felt was closer to home.
Now, the laces on my walking boots had remained tied for the entire hike up until that point. All 7 hours hiking over rough terrain, up waterfalls, etc. As we walked past those dark woods the laces kept coming untied every few feet. It didn't matter what knot I used, if I doubled up the knots, they kept coming undone.
We made it back to the car and there we finally talked. We agreed that we both felt something very dark and malevolent in those woods, we were sure it wanted us to be there after dark, and we were convinced we wouldn't have made it til morning had we have been stuck there after dark.
Fast forward 4 or 5 months. I was back in the forest walking my dogs alone. I was on a well-traveled trail thinking about various things, not paying much attention. Then movement caught my attention and I looked over the ravine to my left and saw a white hart standing in the forest on the far side. We stood and looked at each other for a good 5 minutes before we both moved on. It didn't feel weird, I just had a 'huh, never seen one of those before' reaction. Red deer were a pretty common sight in that forest.
I stuck to the trails. I hadn't wandered off the trails since that day with the waterfalls. I actually went as far as to intentionally walk away from the area with the dark wood. That was in the east, I went west and didn't cross my mental centre line. I spent a good bit of the 3 hour or so hike in my own head. I didn't see a single other walker, and that wasn't unusual. There was a weird area that seemed like a small deer pen that had a peculiar dream-like sensation to it. I couldn't remember how I got there, but I didn't feel unsafe.
I carried on for another 40 or so minutes and I came to a wide brick bridge. It wasn't somewhere I'd been before in all my years wandering, but it's a big forest so I didn't see much of an issue. That was right until I got to the middle of the bridge and I looked down the valley it was crossing. I paused there for a good 5 minutes confirming that it was in fact the same valley I'd come up with my now-ex. I'm not one to scare easy, so I mentally steeled myself for the dark forest and carried on down the mud track.
The dark woods weren't there, nor were the spiders.
I spent a good 15 minutes walking back and forth confirming small landmarks, they were all there. The only thing that was missing was the dark woods, and the spiders.
There was a thin copse (small woodland) there with spindly trees that were clearly older than the 4 months I'd been gone. No sense of being watched. No malevolent presence. Nada.
I never went back anywhere near that direction.
Any ideas what on earth I got myself into? My initial thought was fae, but I haven't found anything tying fae into the spiders.
I practically grew up in the local woods and forest. I knew all of the main walking trails, and a good bit of land off those trails. I spend my childhood and teen years wandering through the forest from breakfast until dark with my best friend.
My now-ex was also a country person and spent a lot of time in his local forests (he was from a couple of hours away), so I thought it'd be a good date to take my dogs and go hiking through the forest. We went off the main trails pretty quickly and started doing what I'd done through my teens - following small streams and climbing up the small waterfalls (2ft - 8ft tall). It was a nice peaceful hike through beautiful forest.
We'd been out hiking for 6 or 7 hours and it was time to start heading home. We thought sunset was about an hour off. So we climbed up the next waterfall and emerged in a valley with steep but climable sides. Roughly 100ft further down the stream ahead of us was a large brick bridge. It was quite distinctive and memorable and clearly had a good view down along our little valley.
We headed up the side of the valley and paused about halfway up because we started to realise something was wrong. Personally, I noticed the fact it was silent. As in, completely dead silent, first. The forest prior to the climb had been vibrant and alive with birds, insects, the usual forest stuff. My now-ex noticed the spiders first. The ground was covered in them. Thousands of small black spiders scurrying about over the dirt covered in dead pine needles. At this point the dogs were staying closer than they had been (they were terriers, they roamed pretty far and wide), but they seemed happy and chilled. As we paused and looked around us, my now-ex noticed that all of the trees on that bank were either dead or dying. They were all relatively young too, mostly pine, a few young oak.
That seemed odd and there was a growing sensation of wrongness, so we headed on towards the wide mud track. On the other side of the mud track was a small very dense, very dark, woodland. The trees weren't the same pine, yew, and oak as the rest of the forest. I'm not sure what they were, but they grew so close together that it was almost pitch black inside of that space. We became keenly aware of a malevolent presence watching us from those woods. I called the dogs close and we put them on their leads and we headed away from the brick bridge as that's the direction we felt was closer to home.
Now, the laces on my walking boots had remained tied for the entire hike up until that point. All 7 hours hiking over rough terrain, up waterfalls, etc. As we walked past those dark woods the laces kept coming untied every few feet. It didn't matter what knot I used, if I doubled up the knots, they kept coming undone.
We made it back to the car and there we finally talked. We agreed that we both felt something very dark and malevolent in those woods, we were sure it wanted us to be there after dark, and we were convinced we wouldn't have made it til morning had we have been stuck there after dark.
Fast forward 4 or 5 months. I was back in the forest walking my dogs alone. I was on a well-traveled trail thinking about various things, not paying much attention. Then movement caught my attention and I looked over the ravine to my left and saw a white hart standing in the forest on the far side. We stood and looked at each other for a good 5 minutes before we both moved on. It didn't feel weird, I just had a 'huh, never seen one of those before' reaction. Red deer were a pretty common sight in that forest.
I stuck to the trails. I hadn't wandered off the trails since that day with the waterfalls. I actually went as far as to intentionally walk away from the area with the dark wood. That was in the east, I went west and didn't cross my mental centre line. I spent a good bit of the 3 hour or so hike in my own head. I didn't see a single other walker, and that wasn't unusual. There was a weird area that seemed like a small deer pen that had a peculiar dream-like sensation to it. I couldn't remember how I got there, but I didn't feel unsafe.
I carried on for another 40 or so minutes and I came to a wide brick bridge. It wasn't somewhere I'd been before in all my years wandering, but it's a big forest so I didn't see much of an issue. That was right until I got to the middle of the bridge and I looked down the valley it was crossing. I paused there for a good 5 minutes confirming that it was in fact the same valley I'd come up with my now-ex. I'm not one to scare easy, so I mentally steeled myself for the dark forest and carried on down the mud track.
The dark woods weren't there, nor were the spiders.
I spent a good 15 minutes walking back and forth confirming small landmarks, they were all there. The only thing that was missing was the dark woods, and the spiders.
There was a thin copse (small woodland) there with spindly trees that were clearly older than the 4 months I'd been gone. No sense of being watched. No malevolent presence. Nada.
I never went back anywhere near that direction.
Any ideas what on earth I got myself into? My initial thought was fae, but I haven't found anything tying fae into the spiders.
