THE THING IN THE WOODS About 2 summers ago, I was a camp counsellor in a day camp (not the overnight camp in the woods). I was in charge of the archery course. The archery course was located in front of a dark forest. The forest stretched on for miles onto a tall hill that was used for an observatory. The forest had trees that had very dense foliage at the top, this makes the inside of the forest really dark. One cloudy day, I took a break and hung out with the 6 of the campers. They were kinda getting restless and they decided to venture into the woods. Somehow they went with pairs at a 10min. intervals. They entered through the denser side of the forest. I decided to stay and watch the rest of the group. After waiting for around 15 mins, I was getting pretty worried and decided to go in and look for the kids. I went in through a different entrance, and it was pretty freaky. I was just a few steps from the entrance then I heard yells and screams. I started to run out as fast as I could. The campers ran out and they were pretty freaked out. They told me that there was "something back there". Since I was the counsellor, I had to go and investigate what was going on. Another camper went with me to show me where it was. I went in with doubts that it was something "supernatural". I just thought that another camper was playing a trick on us. It took us 10 mins to walk there. I was pretty surprised that the place looked like someone was camping there. There was a couple of bricks, a few logs and something that really scared me. There was the mutilated remains of a tree, it looked like it was used as a sharpening post for a bear. The tree was literally shredded. When I looked closer, there were strange symbols carved into the bark. Next to the tree, there was a piece of the bark with a red substance on the tip. Before I had time to investigate the rest of the "campsite" my camper started to yell. She was pointing to something into bushes. I started to turn around to see what she was pointing to, the bushes started to shake violently, and distant growl was heard. I didn't stay to investigate. I started to run very fast with my camper right in front of me. The leaves behind started to crunch like something was running after us. I didn't look back and ran right into the archery site. I never went near the site ever again. Submitted From:Mel, Ontario, Canada