Scary camping experiences

[Spider]

Very interesting to hear people's camping frighteners as I've had one or two...and a fair few others when it was just the paranoia...

Wild camping in British Columbia, we pitched at night and could hear what sounded like a large dog barking fairly close by, but were so knackered we didn't care.

Then in the morning, luckily while we weren't out for a toilet trip this huge German Shepherd is going berserk outside the tents. I've never been so glad of a bit of canvas.

Another time, in the Okanagan Valley, on a semi legal site the only bit of shade was underneath the water tap...so the dogs used to hang out here..and not let me get anywhere near a drink. Had to wait until some guy who knew how to handle them came along and quickly follow him to the tap

[john4703]

I remember camping near the Dead Sea. Just about asleep when a couple of Israeli border guards arrived and woke me up to tell me that it was dangerous camping there because of flash floods. I argued that I'd chosen a bit of a hill well aboove any drey water course so no problem, a bit more waving of guns and they then asked if I was scared of terrorists, I saidf no and would they please shove off as I was tired. The final thing they told me was that there had been reports of jackalls with rabbies in the area. I moved on rather quickly.

[vernon]

At the crack of dawn I was woken up by someone snoring in the tent next to me. I felt rather cross as my tent was well away from others in the field and I assumed that the noise was coming from a latecomer's tent who, despite having an entire field to choose from had chosen to pitch next to me. I struggled to sleep for the next hour and then gave up.

I crawled out of my tent to find that there was no-one anywhere near me. the snoring? - a woodpecker hard at work. The site warden reckoned that it had been waking campers up for the past three weeks and that all the hammering wasn't entirely due to hunting for food. Some of it was a mating ritual.

[Mick F]

We get woken here at home by animals and birds during the night. As I type there's an owl hooting it's head off out there!

A couple of nights ago, some foxes were giving it wellie in our back garden. All sorts of screeching and wailing and barking. I think a vixen was getting a good seeing-to.

Things that go bump in the night ...

[Lawrie9]

I was camping in some forest in the Scottish Highlands not far from a loch and quite near a single track railway when I heard an almighty roar. I don't know if it was The Loch Ness Monster, a wild boar, a dear or what. It sounded very scary at the time. I have wondered if it was some recorded noise to keep animals off the railway.

[ronyrash]

i have camped cyote country in the states and their howling and screaming at night is very scary,i here they not known to attack people.can somebody please verify this.

[Les Reay]

It seems that coyotes really do attack people - but not very often. See http://www.varmintal.com/attac.htm for some accounts. The main worry is if they are carrying rabies.

This reminds me of another story I heard in Africa about a guy sleeping in a tent and sticking his foot outside - apparently, a hyena bit it off!

[james01]

I don't know if it was ....... a dear

Is this some kind of camp Scottish character?

[amorphous]

Hi

As a devout wild camper (organised campsites horrify me!!), I have slept in some moderately strange places over the last few years, some 'highlights' that spring to mind....

Cemetaries in northern Italy (quiet, running water, no dogs!!)
An abandonded village in Croatia ([inappropriate word removed] myself the next day when I found a 'Warning Landmines'' sign the next morning!)
A weird bomb shelter in Albania
A deserted, and somewhat spooky housing scheme in Slovakia
...and a very stressful night somewhere in Serbia, where some lunatic was unloading an AK47 to close for comfort.

One of the strangest of all was a motorhome site in Croatia? where the owner kept serenading me with some god awful songs on his acoustic guitar, while his wife kept giving me free beers.

I'm sure these are quite moderate compared to some of you guys....so what/where were your wildest wild campings?

[Bigdummysteve]

Despite wild camping in all sorts of places I've yet to scare myself. My brother and I did have an interesting experience in Croatia during the conflict however. We were parked up on a very remote cliff top for few days windsurfing from the rocks below, one evening we noticed several armed men skulking in the bushes, I was further alarmed by the non matching uniforms so I told my brother to lay down on the van floor and keep quiet. After the third or forth loud bang on the door by a gun butt we opened the door. Four large men invited themselves in handing us thier sub-machine guns which we stacked in the corner of the camper. We shared a few cigs and beers, they said good night and disappeared into the darkness.
Needless to say we finished our supply of beer quite quickly and left the nex day thankful not to have been kidnapped.

[mercalia]

At the crack of dawn I was woken up by someone snoring in the tent next to me. I felt rather cross as my tent was well away from others in the field and I assumed that the noise was coming from a latecomer's tent who, despite having an entire field to choose from had chosen to pitch next to me. I struggled to sleep for the next hour and then gave up.

I crawled out of my tent to find that there was no-one anywhere near me. the snoring? - a woodpecker hard at work. The site warden reckoned that it had been waking campers up for the past three weeks and that all the hammering wasn't entirely due to hunting for food. Some of it was a mating ritual.

I thought you were going to say u were woken up by some one snoring near to and found some one else in your tent.... some drunken so and so found the wrong tent

[andrew_s]

the snoring? - a woodpecker hard at work. The site warden reckoned that it had been waking campers up for the past three weeks and that all the hammering wasn't entirely due to hunting for food. Some of it was a mating ritual.

Drilling for food or excavating the nest hole is relatively quiet. They carefully select the most resonant branches for the drumming "song".

[IanW]

We once pitched a large tent on a very quiet campsite field on what was rather a damp camping trip.
We woke to discover that the entire groundsheet had been undermined by moles.
The mole-hills under the groundsheet made it look like a mountain range,
various of our posessions had been tipped /tilted over
and it was quite difficult to traverse the groundsheet because wherever we stood the ground beneath it collapsed.
We suspect that both us and the mole or moles had made the same choice in opting for the driest patch/pitch on the site.

[IanW]

On another camping trip we awoke to (the sound of) a moderately large tree collapsed onto the immediately adjacent (empty) pitch.

[boblo]

A friend and I wildcamped in the backwoods of Idaho by the Frank Church River of no Return, specifically in Bear Valley. Riding that day we'd seen very fresh Timber Wolf tracks and a warm and still leaking, just shot, Black Bear. Though the food was up a tree, every creak and crack in the night had us bolt upright with the heart rates of a (scared) Olympic athlete...