Matt's Woods

This story takes place over the course of a few years and to my knowledge continues to this day. The events are centered around the woods that surround my friend Matt's house, which is in Rocks State Park in Harford County, Maryland.

Harford County, at least the northern part, is still fairly rural and Rocks is pretty heavily forested. The area use to be the home to a few Indian tribes as well and some of the rock formations in the park may or may not have been holy ground, but that's more or less irrelevant because this story doesn't involve Indians, it's just exposition, Harford County is a weird area. It's also was the home of the Booth family. John Wilkes and his less famous brother (more famous at the time though, he was an actor) Edwin grew up there. But I digress, onto Matt's woods.

Only part of this story involves me, but I will describe the rest as I was told.

The woods at Matt's house have always been a little strange. None of my friends has ever felt comfortable in them really. When we were younger they used to camp out in the woods at night, and apparently they all felt strange in different ways but passed it off as over-active imagination or something. Anyway this continued from grade school up until high school graduation in 1996 which is where I enter the story. After graduation we had a party in the woods down at the old campsite.

I'll try to describe the campsite as best I can, I was only ever there at night. To get there you had to walk through Matt's back yard, there was about 150 yards or so of grass between the house and the edge of the forest. Then, after entering the woods it was about 25 (?) yards or so back to the campsite. The site itself was in the midst of a bamboo patch. Seems like an odd place for bamboo to me. There was also a small stream running through. Anyway, we got back there and built the fire. Had our party and left at around 2 or 3 I guess. Everything was normal, right? It wasn't until 2 weeks later when we were away on our senior week when the entire story seemed to come together.

The night this happened, we now affectionately call "Fright Night", because we scared ourselves to death. We started out talking about weird stuff, which lead to talk of ghosts and the like. Then someone said something about Matt's woods and everything poured out from there. We all had in different ways experienced a presence in the forest. Actually 3 different spirits. Some of my friends saw them in the forest, some saw them through the fire, I myself only felt them, but we all pretty much agreed on one thing, they were NOT friendly.

The way I personally experienced them was, as I said, by just kind of feeling them. For the purposes of this story, you'll need to know that my friend Rob is tall and thin, and my friend Alec is short and well built. Anyway, there were numerous times during the night when I felt Rob next to me. You know how if one of your friends, or someone built like one of your friends, is next to or behind you, you can tell? Well, I'd turn to say something to Rob only to find out he was no where near me, he would be all the way across the fire. Or when we were leaving the woods I could feel Alec right behind me, almost breathing over my shoulder, so I turned to ask him something and saw he was a good 30 feet behind me. That kind of creeped me out. Add to it the fact that the whole evening I had been very uncomfortable, I couldn't settle down, I just felt kind of out of place, almost unwanted. So that's my part, here's what we collectively know about them.

There are 3 of them. 2 are short and muscular, like my friend Alec, the other is tall and thin, like Rob. They are dressed in white gowns. Kind of shapeless, kind of generic, timeless gowns. They also wear some kind of hat or headpiece. Almost like priests or something. They're eyes are glowing white. They "work" together. They don't like us!!

For some reason this is all localized in the woods, and just that particular spot too. Nothing ever happened in the house or in the yard or another part of the forest to my knowledge. Another thing that happened, although I wasn't there to witness it was the runners.

Apparently my friends on a few different occasions witnessed a white form running between the forest and Matt's cousin's house (it's a family plot of land) which is about 200 yards down the driveway and on the forest border. The runner would either start from the forest and run up to and behind the house, or start from the house and run down into the forest and disappear.

Although this doesn't sound like all that much compared to some other stories, it's very scary and unsettling. Whenever I am around the woods or in them I truly feel a malevolent presence. Whenever I am in the back yard at night I can feel "them" watching me and if I kind of concentrate it's almost like I can hear "them" or something at the very edge of consciousness. But that part may very well be my imagination. When leaving the house at night I also never feel safe until I'm in my car and down the road, sometimes it's scarier then others. For instance, on some occasions I can just tell they're watching, other times it's like they're reaching out and I run to my car and speed off and still don't feel safe even after I get home.

In the recent year or so it's kind of dropped off, but then again we're hardly there, Matt doesn't live at home anymore so we're only there when he comes home, once every 5 months or so. But I know they're still down there. Anyway, sorry about the length. We're still very interested to know what/who they are.