In 2016 my boyfriend (now my husband) and I went camping in eastern Pennsylvania. The place we decided to stop for the night was primitive. Camping was free, no cell service, barely a road, etc. We did encounter two other people. They might not factor into what happened later at all but they were creepy so I’ll describe them.

The first was a woman who had her truck off to the side of the road a little as we drove past. She had the hood open and seemed to be waiting for someone to stop and offer to help. Usually my boyfriend had no problem helping someone but he said his time something about her put him off. She didn’t really seem like she needed help and usually people who need help look at you hopefully as you approach. She looked like she just expected we would stop. That’s what my boyfriend said anyway, I hadn’t really noticed anything that strange about her.

The next person came when we had chosen a spot and were setting up a fire for hotdogs. I had noticed people drive by a few times but my boyfriend pointed out each time was the same car and the man in the car watched us each time he passed. My boyfriend was a little uneasy about this but we had driven around for awhile before finding a place we liked. It had been raining and everything was muddy and we wanted the driest site possible. He could have been doing the same thing. We briefly thought about moving but the road was muddy too. If he wanted to find us all he had to do was follow the tracks. There were some other tracks but not many. He’d only have to backtrack a little to locate us again. He didn’t come by another time so we stayed and spent the several remaining hours before dark goofing off. No one else drove by.

Whether or not those two had anything else to do with our experience, the real fear came later. We had gone to sleep in our tent and sometime around 3 AM we were awoken by this very loud noise. I can’t describe it very well or even remember exactly what it sounded like but my boyfriend said it reminded him of a chain gun revving up. It was also similar to how it would sound if someone recorded a shovel being dragged over gravel and played it over a loudspeaker is another way he described it.

He jumped up and looked out the little window but couldn’t really see anything. The sound repeated itself another few times. I was too scared to speak so my boyfriend whispered that it was probably miles off and I should go back to sleep. I didn’t question this as I figured loud sounds could be easily heard miles off. After we left he told me it sounded like it had actually been coming from just down the road but he didn’t want to freak me out. Looking back I probably should have wondered why he would bother to whisper if apparently the sound was far off.

I was still terrified. Every little thing I heard outside sounded like someone was walking around the tent. We laid there for awhile longer when finally my boyfriend told me to get dressed because we were leaving. I got got alarmed by this and even more alarmed when he unwrapped the machete we had bought just for this trip from it’s plastic before opening the tent. We quickly packed up and loaded the car. I looked around for footprints that weren’t our own, but despite the moon providing plenty of light I couldn’t really see. I did point out something my boyfriend hadn’t noticed though before we got into the car. There was a beer can by our dead fire that hasn’t been there before. We didn’t even bring beer.

While we were driving away my boyfriend explained that he was nervous someone might have been trying to lure us out, so he didn’t think it was a good idea to run from the tent right away. He also half expected to find out gas tank had been siphoned out, but that wouldn’t have stopped us because we had a hybrid car. We joked that that would make a funny hybrid commercial. Number of brutal murders avoided by driving a hybrid: 2. We only joked because we were about shitting ourselves from fear and adrenaline even then.

The rest of our trip we only stayed in well populated camp sites or got a hotel.