There’s something in the trees
So as a preteen I always went to this church camp over the summer in the Angeles National Forest.
One summer, I was grouped up with a fun group of girls and a counselor who didn’t keep a close eye on us and one time during free time we got into her make up and found it funny to do some clown makeup with some lipstick. We thought it funny to spend that free time messing with other campers and counselors when we ran into two of the male counselors starting a game of tag. We joined and during tag, we targeted one of the counselors. As we were chasing him, he started heading out towards the forest and we figured if he’s running out there well so can we. We lasted maybe one or two minutes chasing after him when suddenly we could no longer see or hear him in front of us and it was like he just he just stopped and went to hide. Me and the 2 girls I was with were confused but as we were looking out for him, we were like hello, where’d you go? That was when we noticed some weird like kind of pale human looking figure in a tree across from us so we figured it was him. We called out saying “hey we could see you come on like it’s over we got you” when we didn’t get an answer. Calling out for him again, there was still no reply. It was just kind of swaying back-and-forth in silence. Then we were a little weirded out. Like why wouldn’t he answer us?
A moment later two boys that we used to know had showed up behind us who must’ve been falling behind. They asked us who we were talking to. We told them, there’s something in the tree can’t you see it? They were like oh yeah what even is that. The two went to check it out as me and the two girls who are with me stayed back. As they reached the tree where we were looking, the figure had suddenly it was like it just disappeared and we were like it’s gone. We even called out to it and the boy saying the thing in the tree it just disappeared like it’s not there. So they went to you know look in and around the tree and they were like yeah like there’s nothing there. So we figured maybe it was an animal. But how do you not hear or see it run away? It was like it just disappeared into thin air. Creeped out, the boys came back towards us and we just kind of stood there in confusion for a bit, still confused as to where our counselor went. We decided to head back towards camp and it felt like a couple minutes to get back, we know we didn’t go far. When we finally made it back into camp, a group of counselors were there waiting for us, including the male counselor who we had been playing tag with. They all looked really worried and confused as to why we were out there. They asked us how could we be gone for so long, that it’s been hours, it’s not safe for us to be out there alone, especially with no permission or supervision. We didn’t know what they meant. We were out there with him, our counselor and it had only been a couple minutes. They told us it had been hours and the counselor who we had been following said to us that he never went out there. One minute we were here and then next we weren’t, that he would’ve never let us go out there. We thought that was impossible. Who were we following if not him? But with that, we tried to explain that no we weren’t alone, we were following him We swore to them that it was him who decided to run out there and the one we had been chasing and that the next he was gone. They all told us that wasn’t possible, he’s been out here looking after the other kids during the game until he lost sight of us. We kept asking him, “Then who were we following?” They told us that a story like ours isn’t funny. It ended there. They didn’t give us any kind of punishment for wandering out into the forest, but it stayed on all of our minds.
The five of us that managed to end up out there didn’t tell them about what we saw in the tree, just that we’re sorry we wandered out and got lost for so long. It was still stuck on our minds a lot though. Because what do you mean hours went by? And what do you mean that our counselor never went out there with us? The next day, the five of us decided we wanted go see where we went again, because the day before sounds literally impossible. So around the same time during free time, we decided to wander off without telling the counselors because we didn’t want to get in trouble and headed down the exact same trail that we went on with our counselor (well our supposed counselor) the day before. It had just happened, so it wasn’t like any of us forgot which way we went. We knew exactly what direction we took and everything, but as we went down the trail, the same surroundings that we remembered were in no way familiar. It was almost like a completely different area. It was almost empty. It was like just one big clearing where there were trees surrounding us, but everything that had been standing there the day- the tree from before- everything was just gone. We were all creeped out so we thought to go father out. Maybe we took a wrong turn or something.
We knew we were just out there for what was only maybe 30 minutes. The boys had watches, and not even an hour had passed since we left camp. We thought it would be an appropriate time to go back since we couldn’t find what we were looking for, weirded out and confused. Because we got lost, we gave up. As we headed back, we noticed that everybody was in the big clearing in camp, almost like free time had already been over and when we reached our camp counselors, they said that they had started the games already. They already had lunch. What made us think that was OK to wander out like that again if it wasn’t OK the first time? We said again we were only out for no more than 30 minutes. We thought free time ended in an hour. We should’ve been fine and they said no free time ended at three. We’re like OK it’s 230. Checking the time, we saw that it was 4. So once again, we somehow managed to get so lost that we let hours go by even though we never made it very far from camp at all.
Because of this, our counselors gathered the five of us up and asked us what we were going out there for. We said because of yesterday: we were chasing our counselor during tag into the forest, when all of a sudden we couldn’t find him. It was like we just lost him when we saw this thing in a tree and went towards it out of curiosity until it was like it just disappeared into the air. Our counselors looked at us like we’re crazy cause there’s no way. But they let us continue. We said that after a couple minutes we accepted that it was gone and started to head back to camp since we couldn’t find our counselor and that’s when he told us we were gone too long and then that he claims that he never even went out there with us in the first place. We then explained we went out on our own to figure out what it was we saw out there. We didn’t tell them we got lost again and that it was like the place we were at never existed. They repeated that we were out too long again. But we swore that it was only it was only minutes, not hours.
After that, we accepted that we know who we saw, and the adults were never going to believe us. We knew how long we were out there, and we knew what we saw. We left it at. There was no good explanation for it,we don’t know what it was that we saw out there, or who we were REALLY following, but we know it was something. Is there something wrong with the national forest? Is there something out there? The five of us still don’t know, but some of us still talk about year later today. Maybe there’s some kind of explanation for it but to this day we don’t know how to explain what it was we saw out there.