Written Confession: A Creepy Night in the Allegheny National Forest
The following written confession was submitted via email:
…Two years ago in fall of 2022, I went backpacking in the Allegheny National Forest with a couple of buddies of mine... all of us being lifetime outdoor enthusiasts, all of us with some degree of military experience, and two of us with law enforcement experience ... I say that because I would like to think at least that we were three pretty tough guys with lots of wood experience and shouldn't get easily shaken. I once posted this story on Reddit and got a lot of responses to it, but never took it to a podcast even with several offers.
We backpacked a trail called Minister Creek which is NW PA near Warren, PA and the Kinzua Reservoir. The trail is about a 7 mile loop, but feels a lot longer as it is up and down a lot of steep, rocky terrain. I've done the trail a few times, and we normally will do a one-nighter, hiking up to the northern end of the loop from the trailhead which is located at the southern end of the loop. The trail joins up with the North Country Trail for portions of it.
This particular trip, nothing really stood out. It was a beautiful fall weekend, but the trail wasn't overly crowded. We came across a few groups of hikers here and there, but had our pick of campsites when we arrived at the northern end of the loop where most of the rustic first-come-first-served campsites are located.
We picked a beautiful spot next to the creek, which is about 30' wide and 2-3 feet deep with moderately rushing water, in a valley with steep hills on each side. We set up camp, myself and my one friend [redacted] each had our own small, two-man tents, and our friend [redacted] who is a bit of a hillbilly was just sleeping on the ground out in the open in a sleeping bag and bivy sack. Our tents were on opposite sides of the camp, with [redacted] in his bag under a tree between us and near the fire. This part of the trail has a lot of old-growth hemlock trees... its the type of forest with almost no underbrush --- you can see pretty far through the trees.. kind of like in Braveheart when William Wallace sees the ghost of his dead wife in the forest.
Our evening was uneventful, sitting around the fire, telling stories. We had like a couple of beers each but were not drunk, and no drugs.
The last time [redacted] and I did this trip, we were woken up by drumming in the middle of the night (which we ultimately attributed to hippies having a drum circle in the woods). We were talking about that experience and laughing about it, but we were not talking about ghosts, not thinking about ghosts ... our conversations were not regarding the paranormal, so it wasn't on my mind. We did hear a very loud "BOOM" at one point like a canon going off, echoing through the valley, but figured it was just some other campers screwing around with black powder or fireworks or something.
So here's where it gets weird. I get woken up from a dead sleep by a female voice about 4-5:00 in the morning saying "Dad ... Dad ... Dad." I come to and can still hear the voice and it stops. So I'm thinking ... ok what was that ... did I dream that? Was it like some type of sleep related auditory hallucination? About 30 seconds to a minute go by and I'm in my tent, wide awake, I may have been sitting up at that point, and again right outside my tent I hear more urgently this time "DAD ... DADDY ... DAD!" ... so I am a dad, my daughter was 5 at the time, but she definitely wasn't backpacking with us. I wasn't thinking anything strange, I thought someone was actually outside my tent, maybe another camper had the wrong campsite and was actually looking for her dad.
I open up the tent, and I am scanning around the campsite with my flashlight. There is nobody near my tent, and I see nothing at all until my flashlight reaches across the site and I see the rear end of a black bear sauntering off into the woods across the camp from me going up the hill. I let out an "OH F&CK" ... and the bear keeps walking like I wasn't there. At this point, my two friends were up. The three of us gather in the middle of the campsite and talk about what happened. Neither of them heard the voice, but my friend who was in the bivy sack said he was already awake when he heard the "OH F&CK" because he thought he felt something brush past his face.
So we are obviously on edge having just been disturbed by this ... all three of us are scanning around the woods with our flashlights and we see nobody. It was almost morning and we were up for the day at that point. When it got light, we packed up and left ... not seeing any other campers around us for at least another half mile or so of trail.
I kept thinking about this experience, and on the car ride home I looked up the Minister Creek Trail, maybe searched for "ghosts on the minister creek trail" or "deaths on the minister creek trail" and I found an article about a teenage girl a few years prior who was killed when a tree fell on her tent during a storm while she was there with her church youth group. The creepiest part was this all happened in the same general area we had set up camp.
I REALLY hope it wasn't the ghost of a tragically deceased teenager in search of her dad that I heard, but it was a female voice I heard ... it did sound young, younger than a teenager even. The voice had a very eerie, creepy sound to it. I was thinking maybe whatever it was, was trying to warn me of the bear perhaps. I don't know.
