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.

Well my rational mind tells me that this was an ordinary dog and every time I'm reminded of this incident I always try to tell myself that I was never in any real danger, but bearing in mind my age at the time, this may just be the most terrifying thing I've experienced. My possible poltergeist experience that I told previously doesn't even come close.

But in starting to write this down, I have realised that my memory of events does give a certain malevolence to this dog. How accurate that is I can't fairly say; it's a child's memory, with a child's logic of things. Anyway since Ashley mentions England's folklore of demon dogs, here's an artist's impression of one of them. This is supposed to be Black Shuck.

And this is the kind of dog in my story. No glowing eyes to report, but trust me, this dog didn't need them!

It's probably worth noting that when this happened I had heard no stories of demon dogs or of Black Shuck in particular, so those stories could have had no bearing on how my young mind perceived this event.

Okay, so the story: my grandparents had a cottage in the countryside between my hometown and the next village. They owned a pair of dogs, whose names were Megan and Muffin. Megan was a German Shepard, same breed as the dog this story is about but with a different colouring – that's exactly how I know for certain what the breed of this beast was. Muffin was a golden Labrador. When my grandparents went away on holiday or just away for the day, they would call upon my mother to take the dogs out for their walk. This particular day I don't actually recall if it was on a weekend or if it was during a school holiday, but I was with her to walk those dogs. Being in the countryside there's a lot of fields and stretches of woodland where public footpaths run and this is where we always took the dogs when the ground wasn't muddy, as it wasn't that day. It was a walk we'd been on either on our own or with my grandparents many times.

Things took a turn that my young mind didn't like right away. There's an open field next to the back road that the cottage is down that marks the start of the footpath. As we set on from the cottage I immediately noticed that there were two other people with a black German Shepard on the other side of the field. Seeing other people out there isn't that unusual as my grandparents home isn't the only place down that road, it's one of several. But these people I did not know. Same goes for their dog. Now if that day had proceeded in a normal manner, that would have been the end of it there and then as these people were walking in the opposite direction from where we were going, toward the exit to the road at the top end of that first field.

But that dog stopped walking and just stood staring at us. Even at that age I normally didn't feel threatened by dogs, especially not at that distance, but that black dog made me uneasy with the way it seemed to be looking at me. Its not a feeling I'm ever going to forget, especially with what happened later on.

We continued our walk, passing through several fields and patches of woodland. The uneasy feeling never left me. I kept looking back every couple of minutes to make sure that dog wasn't following us. If you'd asked me then, I'd have said it wasn't.

We came to a bridge across a stream that runs along these fields and woods. My mother went across first, with me and the dogs behind her. I'd actually started to feel a bit happier about being away from that dog, then I heard it. Thundering footsteps, coming fast on the wooden boards of the bridge. I spun around and I admit it, I screamed in terror. Because that black dog was suddenly there, right behind me, even though I had been checking for it for the good fifteen to twenty minutes it takes to get along that footpath and it hasn't appeared to be there, but now it is. And it is charging me. And the people who were with it earlier on, it's owners (I presumed)? Where were they? Seriously, fuck knows. They certainly weren't there with it at that point.

Megan and Muffin leapt into action at my scream, having somehow not known about the other dog's presence (which is weird for dogs, I'd have thought they'd pick up its scent if it was that close, but they showed no signs of being disturbed until I screamed - they hadn't even barked at it earlier on when it had been out in the open) any more than I did. They attacked this dog and saw it off. And there was still no sign of its apparent owners. A dog fight makes a lot of noise and there was not one sound of other people calling their dog, as you'd think their would be if your dog was running loose and the sound of scrap was heard. This has always stuck in my mind that the black dog was very far away from it's owners at that point and given that I had been looking for it and not seeing it and how quickly it was suddenly there, I also firmly believe it was stalking me. Or at least Megan and Muffin, but I was and am still sure it was me.

I firmly believe that those two dogs, now both deceased, saved my life that day. My mother has always told me starting from that afternoon onward that I overreacted to the dog's presence and that is was probably only being friendly, but I don't think that dog was friendly for an instant and am sure she only said that to try to get me to calm down, downplaying the encounter. I was scared for the rest of the day and reluctant to walk that path again for a long time. I never saw those people or that dog again, for which I was very glad.  

Okay so here's the scary story that I said I'd share. This happened to me last summer. It is not paranormal but honestly sometimes I think a ghost may be preferable. This is the story of how I was stalked while walking home alone after dark.

Most of you regulars here are aware that I'm a female, but I will just confirm that for context for those that don't know of me. My Dad always cautioned me against walking home alone after dark just because I was a girl. He never did this with my (younger!) brother. I'm not a throw caution to the wind type of person, but I have always refused to go through life afraid of what if situations. Well one night last summer, I had an experience where I soon wished I'd heeded my Dad more.

I'd been invited to a party. It was a Friday night so no work the next day, so I stayed out late. I'd arrived at the party with another girl who was supposed to walk back with me and crash at my place, but she hooked up with a guy and that was the end of that plan. At that point it really wasn't a big deal for me. The party was in walking distance from my home and I'd walked home alone after dark plenty of times before and never felt unsafe. One of the guys at the party who I knew offered to drive me home as he was designated driver for a group and had a spare seat, but I foolishly declined, insisting I didn't have far to go. I really should have accepted that ride.

I'd say at a normal walking speed I should have got from the house the party was held at to mine in around a quarter of an hour. It was only after about five minutes of this time though that for some reason I suddenly looked around. That's when I saw him. At first I didn't think nothing of it: just a guy walking along the same path as me wearing a hoody. It was late by this point and getting cooler, so having his hoody up wasn't unusual. I thought nothing of it and carried on. A couple of minutes later I turned again, still not sure why, and he was still there. I was walking quite slow and he seemed to be intentionally keeping his distance from me at that time. After I turned a corner he turned as well. I turned again and so did he. At this point I was starting to get worried. I reached into my pocket for my phone to make a call, any call – the police, my parents, my then-boyfriend, any friend, but my phone wasn't there. I realised that I must have left it at the party house or worse lost it somewhere else. I'm not a typical young woman of my age group, I'm not constantly glued to my phone. I hadn't even missed it until I needed it.

So I tried a trick I read online to see if someone is following you. I doubled back on myself. Did a loop around some streets and ended up close to where I first saw the guy.

He followed me all the way.

I then realised that he must also now know that I was aware of him. At this point I was not just worried. I was frightened.

What would you do in such a situation? Try to keep your cool? Run and hope you're faster? Me, I just kept walking, then quickly ducked down a back alleyway that ran behind some houses. I knew he would follow me, but I also knew that there was this house with a shed that a small person (which luckily am I) could squeeze behind and hopefully not be seen from the path in the darkness, so I practically leapt over the fence and positioned myself there in the shadows. I could see where the path ran behind the fence, vaguely illuminated by lights from the houses on the other side, enough so that I could see his shape as he appeared along there.

He stopped. I knew he was looking for me. I am not a religious person but I was silently praying at that point that I was correct about him not being able to see me in my hiding place. Luckily, he instead picked up speed and continued down that alley. I think he must of assumed I got off the main street and had made a run for it. Trust me, that thought had also been in my mine as an option.

I still waited a good five to ten minutes behind that shed, then crept out. There was a light on in the house it belonged to, so I knocked on the door and explained to the owner what had happened. She was a kindly lady around my Mum's age who was shocked that something like that would happen in our town and called the police for me as well as my parents. My dad came to pick me up. He never said I told you so.

I told the police everything that had happened and what I am done to convince myself that the guy was following me and how I had hidden from him. They told me I was very lucky. Unfortunately they never caught the guy. How could they? I never saw a face. It scares me to think that that guy could be walking the streets of my town this very night. That I might walk past him in the daylight and not know it was him. And worse of all, the thing which frightens me the most, is the thought that maybe I know that guy. That he was at that same party I was that night and that maybe he'd seen me leave alone after refusing that ride. These are all the kind of thoughts that still spin through my head about that night every day. I have not stayed out late any night since.