Church in the Woods
I grew up in Ohio in the 70s and me and my childhood friend Joe were outside all the time we could manage it. Joe lived on a farm that bordered a pretty big forest and my parents would drop me off in the morning and we’d stay in the woods all weekend. We’d only come out for school. We loved pretending we were frontiersmen; we’d build shelters, traps, practice making fire with sticks, the whole nine yards.
When we got to be in high school, we got this notion to pull a “Stand By Me”. This was based on the movie of the same name that had just come out. The idea was that we’d walk the railroad tracks out in the country. But instead of looking for a dead body, we’d find cool bridges to fish from, and camp a little ways off the tracks. Of course we knew this was dangerous and we’d likely be trespassing, but we were kids.
We had a lot of fun. We did find beautiful rivers, we discovered bridges no one went to, we fished, we hid from trains. At night we camped in woods just near the tracks and made small hidden fires. Nothing bad ever happened. It was idyllic. In fact, it was so fun we did it multiple times. Never had a problem.
After high school me and Joe went our own ways. We both left home, but always stayed in touch and always tried to coordinate visits so we’d see each other occasionally. Well one summer in the mid 90s it worked out that we were both in town for about a week. We’d do stuff with family in the day, and at night we’d either catch drinks at a bar or sit outside Joe’s house around a fire and talk about the old days.
One night, me and Joe got to talking about our “Stand By Me” trips. Well, nostalgia and beer are a hell of a mix. Soon we decided to take a day, walk the rails, camp one night and walk home. The day came, we started out early morning. We had my wife drop us off in our old spot where we used to start - right outside our hometown. She thought this was absolutely crazy and made sure to mention it.
When she pulled away, Joe suggested that instead of walking the usual route, we’d take the opposite direction - just to be adventurous. We knew the land well, we had a map, so I gave a “What the hell” and off we set.
The day went fine. It was fun, and a little sad - but in a good way. We found a bridge and sat on the edge, smoked a joint and moved on. We had no fishing gear, but we brought some canned food and other stuff. Before night started to set in, we picked a spot to camp. It was a thick forested area, trees on every side of the train tracks so you felt like you were in a tunnel. We had brought small hammocks to sleep on, but before we set them up we decided to do a little scouting of the perimeter.
Now, this is what we used to do in the old days too. We’d walk the area around a little bit to make sure some dude’s house wasn’t just over a hill and we were actually camping in their yard. We walked maybe a hundred or so feet into the woods and up a small incline. We figured if we didn’t see anything from on top of this short hill, we’d be fine. But when we got to the top, we saw an old building down at the bottom, about a hundred yards into the woods. It was barely visible.
We pondered over what to do. We both assumed it was a sugar shack or something, because there didn’t appear to be a clear road into it. From where we were, there didn’t look to be anyone in it either. All was quiet, no movement could be seen. No lights. We decided to walk a little closer just to make sure. We came down the hill very slowly and as we neared the building we saw it wasn’t a sugar shack at all, it was an old church.
It looked like it had been abandoned for years. It was a squat, sagging building whose wooden planks were almost black from years of moss and rot. A cross still stood on top of the place, also weathered black. None of the windows had glass and there were no doors, just open doorways. We got close enough to see inside, there were rows of pews and a built up section in front for a preacher to stand. We didn’t go all the way in, we didn’t want to. Beyond all that, there was no sign of anyone else. No footprints, no paths, no roads. It was an abandoned church.
We left immediately and went back up the hill to our spot we had picked to camp. Having a hill between us and the church made us feel better, but we were still a little uneasy. We chalked it up to the natural creepiness seeing a church in the middle of the woods would elicit. Besides, at this point it was dusk and we just decided to rig up our hammocks and go to sleep and move on at early morning.
Night set in, and as we lay in our hammocks and shot the shit, we began to hear something in the direction of the church. Our conversation about it went a little like this;
“Do you hear that?”
“What the fuck is that?”
“It sounds like...people singing.”
And it did sound just like singing. We both slid right out of our hammocks and hunkered down, straining to hear more. We listened for a minute or two, and the singing continued but it wasn’t getting louder. Finally we decided to creep back up the hill and see if we could spy where the sound was coming from. We could still move very quietly in the woods from the old days, it was second nature to us. The moon was barely out but it provided enough light so you wouldn’t walk right into a tree, but it was near pitch black. We didn’t use flashlights as we crept slowly up the hill and we didn’t talk. When we got to the top we saw light in the distance.
It was coming from the church. And the singing was coming from inside. Joe and I put our heads close together and had a hushed conversation that boiled down to “Can you believe this shit?” The light looked to be candlelight from the way it flickered, and though we tried, we couldn’t make out what was being sung. It sounded like church music, but in another language. We sat and watched for awhile, trying to see who was in there, but we only saw occasional shadows. We had no intention of getting closer either, we had about a football field length between us and we aimed to keep it that way.
The singing continued for a bit, and then it stopped. After that, a booming male voice began to chant. I was already freaked out, but this voice thoroughly scared the shit out of me. It sounded like some old testament preacher you see in movies, but again it was like he was speaking in a different language because we couldn’t understand a single word. Eventually it got to where the single male voice would say something and then a bunch of voices would answer in song. This lasted for awhile and then they all broke into this long, sustained wail that just kept getting louder. It got so loud and so...disturbing that I covered my ears. Then it stopped.
At this point I was just getting ready to say “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” when Joe put a hand on my shoulder and hissed “They’re coming out!” We were far enough away that we couldn’t make them out really well, but what we could see was a line of figures walk out the open doorway, all holding hands in single file. We could see some of them had flashlights. They began to sing again, and the light from the flashlights began to move toward us and the hill.
We booked it back down to our camp site, grabbed our shit and ran to the tracks. Once there, we ran down the tracks in the direction we had come from. After a few minutes, we stopped and looked back. We saw lights coming down the hill. They were moving erratically like whoever was holding them was shaking them.
We continued to run in spurts and walk as fast as we could. We eventually stopped seeing the lights and came to a road. By our map we knew a small town was about fifteen minutes down it, and we walked there, got to a 24 hour gas station and called my wife to come get us.
My wife and other friends all just thought it was kids messing around, but I heard those voices and they sure as hell didn’t sound like kids to me. Not sure who those people were, but it was definitely the creepiest thing that happened to me out in the woods.