Tales of the Unexplained

[frozentripper]

I was once paddling upstream on a small river in the dark (although there was a shadowy full moon rising) and in a pond-like widening, couldn't find the narrow channel out to proceed further upstream... even though I had paddled the same familiar stretch downstream during the day. After paddling around the margin several times, I began to imagine that I had somehow entered another portion of the river that I wasn't aware of. The notion that I was actually someplace else than before started to make things look stranger with each passing moment, trying to imagine where this dark place could possibly be, until I pulled out the flashlight and found the narrow exit out obscured by weeds.

As soon as I knew where I was again, things appeared normal once more and the anxiety disappeared. The pond was shaped to act like a giant minnow trap while paddling around the margin.

 

[Alan Gage]

I'm no scientist but, similar to Big Al, my mind doesn't leave much room for the unexplained. That's a good thing because I hear things in white noise. The white noise of a furnace running, a fan, air conditioner, and, applicable to canoe tripping, the roar of rapids. Usually it's music. Like music from a distant radio where you can pick up the type of music and general tune but voices are too muffled to understand.

Each rapid plays a different kind of music and it's there in my head constantly. Country, rock, metal, 50's, etc. A couple times it's sounded like indian chants. It wouldn't be too hard to imagine it's the voices and songs of indians who had drowned.

I try not to camp where I can hear rapids but on my Bloodvein trip, where there are plenty of rapids and nearly all of them have campsites, I ended up sleeping by them a lot. It was the first time I'd been exposed to white noise for such an extended period of time and there came a point when I started to wonder if I was going crazy. I told myself that crazy people don't wonder if they're crazy so I must be safe. It was a tremendous relief to get back to the upper river where the rapids were much less frequent.

Alan

 

[Guest]

I was once paddling upstream on a small river in the dark (although there was a shadowy full moon rising) and in a pond-like widening, couldn't find the narrow channel out to proceed further upstream.

We had a yearly tradition of night paddling a wide blackwater river back to camp. Even on full moon nights every serpentine turn between the dense cypress forest looming dark in the distance made it appear as if the river simply ended abruptly. That visual was always disconcerting, but not a problem as long as we kept heading downstream.

One trip, while waiting for the tidal pull to increase, we opted to poke up a 100 yard wide side sluice. And then into a wide channel off that. And again. We had passed through some funnel trap action unseen behind us. There was a lot of unspoken “Which way do we try now” before we regained the main stem.

One of our longer duration night floats, and one of the most memorable.

That's a good thing because I hear things in white noise. The white noise of a furnace running, a fan, air conditioner, and, applicable to canoe tripping, the roar of rapids. Usually it's music. Like music from a distant radio where you can pick up the type of music and general tune but voices are too muffled to understand.

Each rapid plays a different kind of music and it's there in my head constantly. Country, rock, metal, 50's, etc. A couple times it's sounded like indian chants. It wouldn't be too hard to imagine it's the voices and songs of indians who had drowned.

You have a vivid imagination, and should mark different rapids with their genre of music or ghostly chant. I’d follow that map.

One of my constant companions is similarly affected and regularly sleeps with ear plugs in. He plays a variety of instruments; perhaps it is a musician thing. Do you play?

I love white noise. I need white noise. At home I used a mechanical white noise machine for years, and now just keep a small whirring fan going all night. Even in winter.

Sleeping in the back of the Tripping Truck a white noise fan is a near necessity in any place with neighbors, especially when going to bed shortly after dark to get up pre-dawn and make miles.

In camp I like nothing more than the white noise of a rapid, crash of surf, or wind sweeping through the boughs (provided I have checked for widow makers above my tent).

I sleep most soundly (no pun) with some constant or regular background noise. The only time I wake up “Wassat?” to some rustle in the bush or scrabble in the leaves is on dead calm nights. 99.99 percent of that stuff isn’t going to eat me, so I’d just as soon not hear it.

I don’t like tarps or rain flies snapping or flapping in the wind, but some constant drone or whoosh is agreeable.

Authorities believe he never even heard the bear coming.

 

[Alan Gage]

One of my constant companions is similarly affected and regularly sleeps with ear plugs in. He plays a variety of instruments; perhaps it is a musician thing. Do you play?

I don't play and as a matter of fact I find most music (at least what I'm likely to hear by turning on the radio) unpleasant. If I have a 3 day road trip it's not uncommon for it to be in total silence (other than me talking to Sadie and singing to myself). I used to listen to music all the time but I'm so used to not having any sort of background noise that I now find it distracting and often aggravating. My mind used to be able to float away on its own with music fading to the background. Now I can't help but hear the music and my thoughts are what fades away.

Alan

 

[Alan Gage]

You have a vivid imagination, and should mark different rapids with their genre of music or ghostly chant. I’d follow that map.

What's funny about me hearing music in the white noise of running water is that I only hear it when I'm not conscious of it. I'll be mindlessly going about camp chores and in my head I hear that music. It seems loud and I can't stop hearing it and it's about the only thing I can hear. My mind is freewheeling and I've accepted that the music is real. Then suddenly I become conscious of what's happening and my brain kicks back into gear. Instantly the music stops and is replaced by the roar of rapids and all the other sounds that actually do surround me. The transition always catches me by surprise. The longer I was among the rapids, especially on the lower Bloodvein, (which was quite a while since I turned around to paddle upstream as soon as I reached Lake Winnipeg) the worse it seemed to get. I'd never had it get as bad as it did on that trip and at times I did worry a little that maybe one of these times my brain wouldn't snap back to reality and for the rest of my life I'd be that crazy guy that hums to music that no one else hears.

I really get sick and tired of it. Imagine listening to the same verse of a song on repeat for 12 hours.

Alan

 

[Robin]

I should have know better.

When I retired back in 2010 I took a trip out to Woodland Caribou Prov. Park in western Ontario. I had spent a lifetime driving truck and while the company I drove for for 35 years made sure I did everything legally, I was capable of driving non stop for hours on end in my pickup truck if it involved a canoe trip.

I left Connecticut about 2am and drove 19 hours straight and finally pulled into a small roadside parking area not far from Thunder Bay, Ontario on Highway 11. I had a cap on my truck and I had set up a sleeping bag/foam mattress back there for some much needed sleep.

I climbed back under the cap's rear window, stripped down to my skivvies and was snug as a bug in my warm sleeping bag in no time.

Sometime in the wee hours of the night, someone drove into the parking area and parked up close and personal right behind my truck. My new best friend shuts off his high beams, then the engine and soon I hear a door open and shut. sheeeeet.

To give me plenty of room, my packs where up in the cab of the truck with my knife and ax. I hear footsteps in the gravel right outside my window and I can't be sure but I might have said "oh mommy" as I slid down in my sleeping bag.
As my NBF circled my truck I listened and promised myself next time I'll get a room in Cochrane. Soon I heard the door open and the engine start, lights go on and the vehicle pulls away.

After this, I slept soundly for 2 weeks in WCPP.

 

[Penns Woods]

O ne weekend, while in college in Tenn. I decided to spend some time camping and fishing down on Norris lake. I paddled to a nice quiet little cove and

set up camp. After a dinner of hot dogs on a stick I settled under my tarp set up as a simple lean to with an open front towards the camp fire. Sleep didn't

come easy but I finally feel asleep. Then later in the night I awoke to this strange sense that something was wrong. I couldn't breath and my eyes burned so

bad I could hardly keep them open. Finally I forced my eyes open the best I could. Peering threw half open eye lids I caught a blurry shape of something

horrible. There not more then 3 feet away staring back at me was two little beady eyes attached to the face of a skunk. We both froze staring at each other

in the glow of the fire, then thankfully he wondered off. The lingering smell he left behind made it impossible to stay so I broke camp and paddled down the

lake swearing to never sleep under a open tarp again.

 

[frozentripper]

Ralph Bice, in his book "Along The Trail In Algonquin Park" had trouble sleeping next to rapids... his remedy was to sleep with his head pointing upstream, feet downstream... IIRC he also wrote that it really worked.

Getting on with the stories... on one port during a very humid spring day, it became difficult to breathe and not only for me, others were wheezing and puffing as well. As soon as we got back on the water (on Killarney lake from George), the breathing problems stopped. Maybe it was mold of some sort on decaying vegetation releasing spores... anyway, strange and some could have explained it with the port being possessed by some kind of spirit.

 

[lowangle al]

I came across this guy earlier this month, at least he's smiling.

 

[Larry650]

I fell asleep eating Fig Newtons in my tent around 10:30 pm. At 2 am I was awakened and threw the cookies out of the tent, up onto the picknik table at our campsite. Fell back and went to sleep soundly. Some time later something woke me by punching my nose! I had been sleeping with my face against the side of the tent and something outside had just hit me pretty hard. I yelled out "Hey" and immediately heard heavy foot steps run away from the tent on the hard packed earth. I woke my brother up and in a whisper told him someone was right outside and had punched me in the nose, and also I kinda think they were smelling me before the punch. Then the footsteps returned. Well, what do you do? I slowly unzipped about 6 inches of tent door and turned on my flashlight. Right in front of the tent was a huge bear! The bear stood upright and casually knocked a Igloo cooler off a picnic table with a fore paw and began to dine on a 3 lb tub of butter which he consumed. Then he ate a whole loaf of bread except for one slice and the plastic wrapper. By this time my brother and I had crawled out of the tent,and stood up. I lit the bear up with the flashlight and that bear stood up again, looking down at me from the other end of the table. I am 5'8" and the bear is looking down at me. He had this look in his eye that said, "I'm eating everything here and there is nothing you can do about it." And he did. We crept backwards slowly away from him and finally reached the truck and locked ourselves in the cab. This camp ground was right beside the highway on AZ 191. High country, heavily timbered. We drove down to the Hanagan Meadow Inn, parked under the only street light and slept till dawn in the bed of the truck. In the morning the guy that runs the inn came out and told us bears are all over the place and he has to keep garbage locked inside a steel trailer. Well Great!
We drove back to the camp ground and talked to the elderly couple who had the space adjacent to ours. They had a travel trailer. It was their Igloo cooler that was destroyed. I had a stainless frying pan that the bear bit so hard he left teeth marks in the stainless. The bear had tried to get into the couples trailer and only the wife screaming scared the bear off.
Update, The Forest service came in and tried unsuccesfully to trap the bear for relocation. When that didn't work, they called in the professional hunter. That bear weighed 354 lbs. That's a big boy for Arizona.

 

[Larry650]

Second story, Took same brother camping two weeks later, no bears but at dawn we were awaken by the weirdest noise and it was close too. A noise neither of us could identify. Turned out a squirrel came over and decided to try to climb the taught material of the tent side. His little toenails made the weirdest and loudest ZING ZING ZING noise imaginable. Scared us both awake.
My brother told then he was done camping with me. Seems every time he went camping with me something weird happened.