The Paranormal & Other Scary Stories Thread

This isn't really a paranormal story, but I guess it is kinda on the peripheral of it. Just to be clear, I've never seen one thing in my life that would cause me to believe I'd seen hard evidence in the paranormal. This is a story, which still freaks me out to some extent, about others who apparently believed. Bear with me.

This happened when I was a teen. I'd been dating this girl for a few weeks at the time. For a bit of context, she had a busy house; parents, multiple siblings and my place wasn't much better. Not a lot of 'alone' time if you know what I mean.  So one day, she suggests the two of us go up some local woods. They aren't actually public woods, but as far as either of us knew no one was going to actually stop us from going there and I'd actually been there quite a few times in the past with friends. Me, being typical teen male that I was, was convinced I was about to get lucky or at the very least make out with her without the constant threat of disturbance.

It's my business about what did or did not go on with the girl, I won't confirm or deny anything, so let's fast forward a bit. We went up to those woods after lunchtime and we stayed up there longer than we intended, so the sun was going down before we'd left them. As I said, I'd been to the woods several times before, but not being public woods there are no well trodden paths up there. Basically, it's easy to get turned around and that's exactly what happened. We were still up there after dark.

We had phones of course, but mobiles were still quite basic at the time, so nothing that could provide a light. We could have called someone, but honestly there wasn't much anyone could have done except launch a search party. If we knew exactly where we were in the woods we wouldn't have had such a problem. And we were both reluctant to call for help, unsure if we could get done for trespassing.

Luckily it was a clear night so even under the tree canopy it wasn't pitch blank. Still, seeing wasn't exactly easy. My girlfriend is jumping at every noise by this point and I'm not exactly happy either, but I'm trying to be the big man to impress her. We soldier on, using the plan that if we keep going in a straight line we have to reach the edge of the woods at some point and hopefully get our bearings from there.

Picture about an hour of this. That's when we see it. Light. It's not a torch or anything electrical though, it's the light that comes from a campfire. Now, in hindsight this could have gone a number of different ways, some of them okay but a lot of them bad, but I'd camped in these woods myself with mates before that night so at first I thought we'd caught a lucky break. We kept moving forward, but that's when we heard it. The chanting. The fucking chanting. Let me tell you we both really wished we'd called someone earlier. We didn't understand the words, but we sure as hell weren't imagining them. Someone is chanting by that fire. Not just one someone either, we were sure we could pick out at least three voices now that we were a bit closer.

My girlfriend is proper freaking out by this point and I actually had to shush her for fear of being heard. Something told me that lost or not we didn't want to approach these people for help. Something felt really off with the way they were chanting into the flames. It wasn't fucking normal. I told my girlfriend to creep forward as quietly as she could so we could try to skirt around their camp, hoping that their chanting would actually be what hid our presence from them. I was really unwilling to just change direction at this point, as I was sure we had to reach the wood's edge soo given how long we'd been walking.

As we drew closer, I was able to see the people a bit by the fire. They were all sitting cross-legged on the ground, their arms raised into the air as they chanted. I could see no faces. The closest one had their back to me and all wore hoods. I noticed by the firelight that there was something carved into the nearest trees to them. I can't be certain but I'm reasonably sure they were pentagrams. I sure as hell wasn't going up to get a closer look or ask. Or hang about. We kept moving, the chanting fading behind us with no sound of pursuit. Then we hear a scream. Luckily it didn't sound human, but animal. That we it for both of us. We fucking bolted.

Eventually we got out of the woods. We survived, and we never spoke or that encounter to ever other for as long as we dated (we broke up about two months later, for unrelated reasons). In spite of our earlier worry of trespassing, I couldn't in good conscious not alert the police so as soon as we were well away from the woods and back in town I made an anonymous call on a pay phone. We still had one of those, back then. Neither of us ever heard that anything become of it and no story appeared in the local paper. Honestly, I think the police probably took my call as a prank.

I eventually told some friends about what happened in those woods, who think I made it up, believing I was covering up striking out with the girl. This is the first time I've told it in years. Still remember it like it was only last night. I am 100% convinced we stumbled onto some kind of occult or even satanic ritual in those woods that night and I actually fear what might have happened to us if we'd been seen. I went to those woods again only one time after that (in daylight!) with mates, to try and prove what I saw by finding either fire remains or what I thought were pentagrams craved into the trees. I found neither. I certainly never took a girl up there ever again.

So yeah, not paranormal as such, no ghosts or ghouls here, but given what I'm sure was happening there that night it stands to my reasoning that those people believed in something. Exactly what I'm still not sure to this day. I certainly never want to meet those people ever again.