Born and raised in the heart of Appalachia (Cosby,TN). My family's land bordered National Forest for miles and miles behind us. It was a wonderful place to grow up and I spent my fair share of time in the woods or fishing the Pigeon River outside of playing sports. Needless to say I saw and heard a lot of weird things being in the middle of dense NF. The weirdest one that sticks with me though is a time my cousin and I were planning a hike and hunt to a place called Devil's Backbone behind the house. It is a solid 2.5 mile trek going almost vertical for more than 2/3rds the trip. It's a rough hike that's steep as a horses face but it can be rewarding with killer views and the potential to shoot a buck/bear that may have only crossed paths with a human a handful of times. We got started mid morning and had planned to be at the backbone and set camp a couple hours before dark. The hike turned out to be a little rougher than we had planned and it started getting dark on us as some cloud cover rolled in and it started to drizzle. We fought thru the laurel thickets for about another hour and finally ended up at the edge of the giant bowl in the backbone. We were in the heart of some remote ass territory. At this point we were damp from the drizzle and pretty wore down so we started pitchin camp with the last bit of light we had left. Failed an attempt at building a fire due to the wetness, so we called it a night and went to bed. I can honestly say that night I had one of the best sleeps I believe I may have ever had. Got outta the tent about an hour before light and we started making our way to the backside of the bowl to setup and ground hunt.
Our setup was solid as we were perched on the lip of a ridge overlooking a DEEP holler that was full of oaks and poplar. As a lot of you know who are from or have been in this territory, we were in the heart of mature timber. 150 yard shot in some spots was not out of the question. You can see a long ways in these big woods. As we were both sitting there waiting for daylight to come we heard some walking in the leaves and a few sticks breaking not far off in the distance and assumed it was a bear. The sound would come and go every 5-10 minutes or so and it sounded like it wasn't moving much or just sort of feeding/walking in a circle. Naturally our assumption was bear feeding on acorns. After a few more minutes it's staring to become gray light and the sounds of the twigs cracking and walking stops and we hear a voice, like a loud whisper almost. Real weird. My automatic reaction was, "Damn we got another guy in here that had the same idea as us" but there is no way in hell a man would walk almost 6-7 miles on an overgrown blow-down type forest service road to maaayybee see one deer because the only other access other than behind my house is a trail head that began at the head of Mill Creek, which was a good ways away and vertical the entire time. Anyway...it's finally light enough to see through most of the woods and sure enough we see a man sitting on the ground, non hunting clothing, just stacking sticks and kind of like playing in the dirt. At this point we both are getting pretty uneasy but we have rifles and this dude has no idea we are in the world so we just sit and watch him thru our binos. He was probably 75ish to 100 yards away on a ridge vein down below us and really starting to crank it up in the weird department. He went from loud whispers to screaming at the top of his lungs and at one point crying and talking to himself saying "I never should have done it, I should have stayed but I am faithful to my master" and all kinds of stuff that made us both ready to get the hell out of dodge. After a few more minutes of crazy acts he laid down back flat against the ridge just looking up talking to himself and that's when we decided it was a good time to sneak outta there and get back to the camp spot. I had a feeling the dude would see us because of the crunchyish leaves and what not, but we tried to be sneaky as possible. We hadn't took three steps and this man raises up, sees us, throws a hand up in the air, and hollers at us. It wasn't like a friendly "hey buddy" type holler but more of a "my master is away and you're not welcome" or something to that effect. He let out a few more demonic bellers and just laid back down looking up.
We were both pretty terrified I ain't gonna lie and we damn near sprinted half a mile back to our camp spot, packed tents, and blew dodge. Left my favorite flashlight in that spot, I imagine its still there.
A 5.5 hour hike in took us about an hour and a half going out. HA! Once we got out we called a few buddies who work for the forest service and National Park and let em know what was going on and where. Nothing ever came of it for a couple months until dead of January/February hit and he came out and was wandering around Hartford. The story I was told is he was a hitch hiker from somewhere up north who checked all the boxes for Moccasin Bend and got dropped of by a trucker in Hartford and was gonna go "live in the mountains." I reckon they found him dead in Harmon Den, NC a year or two later. Crazy.
. I start walking out and got into some impassable thick stuff so I went around it. Now it's getting dark. I look at my gps a I'm only about 75 yards to my truck. I take the straight line approach. Mistake! After about 20 yards I'm in the thickest sh$t I've ever been in. I know I'm close so I keep pushing on. Now it's very dark. Everything I'm carrying is getting caught. I get on my hands and knees and start crawling under that crap. It was like all the undergrowth was bowed over. I was starting to freak out. I got through it finally but fo a 72 year old guy with all that stuff it was not fun. 
