as a fellow new jerseyian and frequent visitor in the pine barrens (batsto and area) i can attest it is creepy at night.

yesh onse i was canoin/fishin late at night and i thought i saw somtin where some later chrased her car in the water and died

Unforturnately I am short on ghost stories that pertain to myself and the outdoors. I can say that any kind of woods are creepy once the sun goes down. I've also been scared by owls, alligators, bobcats, coyotes, deer, even when their proximity to myself shouldn't have been a bother. The problem is, eyesight is our #1 method for getting a handle on the world around us, and when that is taken away we are left with our lesser senses that give us a somewhat distorted idea of things around us.

There were some great squirrel woods behind an ancient graveyard in southwestern Ohio. As teenagers we would park well before light and walk between the gravestones to get to the woods. There always seemed to be a layer of thick fog that just reached the top of the stones, so we were always tripping over something. You get up real quick when you face plant in a foggy old cemetery.

There was a legend about an Indian maiden and a dog that were buried there. Her grave was marked by a lifesize stone Indian figure. The dog's by a lifesize bronze hound. It was said that if you removed a sort of key from under the bronze dog's paw and placed it on the maiden's stone the ghosts of both would appear, and the maiden would return the key to it's proper place.

One night a young couple decided to take up a dare. They pulled the key and placed it on the maiden's stone. Nothing happened so they went back to the car and started to make out. They were startled by a large hound that jumped on the hood of the car barking wildly at them. They also saw a faint woman's figure move slowly across the cemetery. They started the car and roared out of the graveyard. Unfortunately, they had an accident a ways down the road.

Officers arrived and listened to the kids' story. There were huge paw prints on their car's hood and windshield. The officers went to the graveyard. They saw nothing, but when they went to the dog's marker, the key was back under the dog's paw. So many stories like this happened that the community tore down the Indian maiden's statue and brazed the key under the dog's paw.

Sure enough, I saw it myself, there was a bronze dog at one end of the cemetery. Something had been brazed under a slightly lifted paw. At the other end of the graveyard was a large tilted gravestone base where a statue had apparently been torn off.

Still gives me shivers thinking about it.

I purchased a piece of hunting property 4 years ago that has a cemetery located in the middle of it. It has at least 20 stones still standing and probably 20 more that are laying flat and buried in the leaves. If I find one I usually lean them up against a tree or something so at least the marker will be visible. I feel it is the right thing to do.

I met a guy one day who lives near me and we started talking hunting and so forth. He said he was a coon hunter so I welcomed him out to my place. I have a ton of large trees and coon. I explained where my property was and what I owned and that I'd be more than happy to have him out. He informed me that he hunted the property years ago and swore he would never go back. He told me a story about a night he was looking for his dog that was on tree with a coon. He was crawling through some thick brush on his hands and knees when he came face to face with a tombstone. He was a little freaked out but it's not uncommon to find a cemetery in the woods in this area. He found a spot to stand up and was shining his light looking for his dog. He could hear the dog plainly but just could not see it. Then he heard someone call out his name behind him. He turned to look and no one was there. He then heard them whistle. He said the voice sounded odd and it gave him a chill up his spine. Moments later he heard a women call out his name. Then she whistled. He grabbed his dog and never came back.

I never met this guy before and had no reason not to believe him. Here is the story I told him. In the fall of 2007 I let the son of a friend of mine and his buddy camp on the property. They were both good kids and I was sure would cause no problem. The following day, after they had left, I was walking around and noticed they had been digging in the cemetery. No big deal. It's was one of those dumb things kids do. I filled in the hole best I could with my boot and never mentioned it.

A couple weeks later a young amish man logging the property next door "got lost" on his skidder and cut a few choice trees out of my cemetery. I informed him that I was not as concerned about the trees as much as him knocking some head stones over. He pretended to care about what he had done but I knew he could have cared less. I contacted the owner of the logging company, got my money and went on.

Not much of a story until this. A week after the young amish man came onto my property he was killed be a tree falling onto him. A week after the young man went camping on my property he was killed in an auto accident.

I have never stepped foot on that cemetery since and the property is for sale.

We live across from a cemetery and sometimes when a party goes cold I will step outside and call coyotes then invite everyone over to the cemetery. Its funny how it goes from someone hearing a dog then a coyote then a wolverine. Gets me laughin every time.

Thats a good idea sayer...I'll have to give that a try. Some of us would go fish on the river by an old cemetary. If the fishin was slow a buddy and I would throw on some camo or dark clothes and sneak up on people. Gave the guys a good laugh, but most of the girls didn't find it to funny.

Last year, my fishing buddy and i went out on a local impoundment to go trolling for wiper at night. it is a large lake with little structure around it to get bearings from. After a few hours of fishing we turned the boat to head into the marina which was a couple of miles away. Using the compass, we knew the heading we had to take to find the marina opening.
By the time we headed in we couldn't see any more boat lights out on the water- it looked like we were the last ones in.
When we got close to the shore where the marina is we started looking for the beacon that flashes at the marina opening. We could not see it anywhere. We decided that we were maybe too far north and started cruising south along the shore.
We could not see anything, not even the lights from the marina parking lot, nor the lights form the near- by freeway.
As we cruised south I turned around and saw lights from a boat following us. I mentioned to my buddy that it looked like someone else was looking for the marina. When we had cruised far enough south to know that we were past the marina, we turned around to go back north, making a large u- turn to give the boat behind us a large berth, but he cut his turn tight and came around right behind us.
We spent two hours cruising up and down the shoreline looking for the marina, and all the time the other boat was tailing about ten yards behind us. Then suddenly the beacon flashed right in front of us and the parking lot lights came on and we cruised into the marina.
We expected the other boat to follow us in but it didn't. We trailered our boat and from the top of the ramp we looked out over the lake for the other boat, but there were no lights out on the water.

I was fishing a new body of water for the first time with a friend in Texas. We were out late at night around 3am, which is what most ghost hunters or supernatural people call "dead time" or the most active time for the undead and spirits.

Well we were catching a few catfish, but we just had a creepy feeling and the hair kept standing up on the back of our necks. We shook it off but kept getting startled by strange noises. We both swear we heard voices and other stuff and we could not wait for the sun to rise so we had some light around us.

When the sun rose we realized this secret spot we had never fished was a flooded graveyard, the water level had risen so high after some recent floods that we were actually casting over a submerged fenceline that surrounded a graveyard.

Needless to say we released all the fish we had caught and we got outta there as quick as possible, hopefully we did not tick off any spirits that would follow us out of there.

About seven years ago, I was unsuccessfully hunting elephant. The trackers got discouraged, and insisted I see "the Old Man" who would tell us where to find big elephant. We went to the old codger's hut, and all gathered round, men, women, children, and clucking chickens. He put his foot on the head of a homemade axe, thumping the handle up and down, ranting and raving in grand style, all in all a beautiful show. His instructions were as follows: that night I was to sit for leopard, but would see nothing the following morning I was to hunt a specific area, and would see two small bulls which I would not shoot, the next morning I was to hunt another area and would kill a bull with one large tusk and one partially broken tusk, I would then have a strange meeting with a leopard, the result of which he could not understand. All of his predictions came to pass. The strange meeting with the leopard included me getting badly mauled by the cat, which I eventually killed.

While waiting for a plane to evacuate me, I mentioned to the trackers how wise the "Old Man" had been. They looked at me in horror, and emphatically stated he was just a crazy old fool ... but he could read the future!

Once, I was catfishing and swore that the damn fish was looking at me and was from mystics. The thing rose out of the water as I pulled him in to shore, and the river was so black and desolate from my coleman lantern and the sky was so blue and full of stars with the moon full that the scene seemed Paegan. The catfish ended up being a citation, but his golden eyes staring at me to release him were enough to almost send chills down my spine, had I not had a drink in my bag.

There is a 4000 acre reserve near my house. I was deer hunting and bagged a doe at last light. By the time I had her cleaned out it was completely dark. I didn't think about things going bump. More about things going yip, as I dragged the deer with one hand and my .357 in the other, I hiked the two miles back to the car in complete darkness as the stars came out. When I was back within the car I reflected about how nice it was to look up and see that big sky but while the coyotes escorted me home in the dark my blood was pumping so hard that my heart sounded like thunder in my head. I don't mind being out after dark, but I do realize how fragile my own defenses become once my eyes can no longer be trusted.