[/url]The trees have eyes… by martinddd, on Flickr[/img]

The forest has eyes 😯

Ni.

Beech tree trunks look like elephants feet.

Very big, all seeing elephant overlords!

Also loving the grammar pedantry so soon in the thread 🙂

Only in East Lothian. What started as a fan club took a turn for the worse.

It usually just doggers though,

What really freaks me out is when you pass a scarecrow and you can feel it watching you – but when you look back it turns away quickly and pretends it wasn’t looking at you at all! Spooky or what?

Yeah sometimes 🙂

[url=https://flic.kr/p/Nfy3wi]2016-10-20_07-59-06[/url] by Jeevester, on Flickr

I’m having a flashback to solo night riding at Cannock and turning round to see dozens of pairs or glowing red deer eyes staring at me. Well, I tell myself they were deer.

Oh, come on! No one? Really?

*flounces off*

Shrubbery?

I was once riding at dusk through a pine forest in North Wales. There were these weird fast movements all around me but I couldn’t exactly see what was responsible for them. Anyway, I turned on my wheels and got out of there. On the way out I came face to face with an ostrich. Turned out the plantation was an abandoned ostrich farm and the birds had gone feral.

Quite enjoy killing the lights and waiting up in the darkest sections just to see what’s really there

dozens of pairs or glowing red deer eyes

If they were red they weren’t deer muhuwahaha

I caught a fox’s attention the other night and followed it up an interesting looking track like Alice in Wonderland and the white rabbit.

I ended up in a spooky dead end clearing like something out of Blair Witch. Could see the fox’s eyes staring at me from the darkness in my lights.

You’re always being watched in the woods. Just not by axe murderers or zombies

My mates complain about feeling watched, when you’re out night riding alone but none of them have spotted me yet.

Just not by axe murderers or zombies

That’s what the axe murderers and zombies want you to think…

Got lost a few years ago on a night ride and ended up coming back into town by a route i’d never been on. Stopped to open a gate and about half a dozen armed blokes in full camo climbed out of the ditches/woods/undergrowth on the other side of the gate, filed passed me quite rapidly and promptly disappeared into the woods behind me. Only thing any of them said at any point was one quiet “Ta mate” before he sidled off into the woods.

Don’t mind confessing to very very nearly shitting myself when the undergrowth started walking past me. Carrying guns.

I did a poo in the woods a while back. Figured my glinting backside would make any watchers think twice about what they were doing.

I happened across 5(?) Youths sat in the only pitch black drinking vodka out of plastic cups. I said ‘couldn’t you have at least brought a torch’?!

To be met with ‘mate you are crazy coming up here on your own, it’s well scary in the dark you must be a nutter’.

I once got followed by an owl for about five miles. It flew from fence post to fence post beside me while I was doing the SDW at night.

Don’t know what it is with me and the birds.

One dark winter/autumn night few years ago when I was out riding in local woods, I’d just went over a little bridge and up the short climb at the other side when I became aware of a bright light of to the right of the trail 20m into the woods. The light was very bright and big and seemed not to be directional almost like the light was coming from the ground. I was spooked, I could not see any movement around the light, no noise coming from an engine or anything, I tried to rationalise it but without going any closer, moving along the trail to change my point if view but it did not change, it just kept being big and bright I imagined the light to be possibly pulsing slightly but couldn’t be sure. Fek it, I’d had enough and pedaled away both perplexed and a bit jittery.
Anyway after another mile or so with my confidence returning a round a bend and there in front of me at less than 10m and at the side of the trail was the the same phenomena. This time I could see it better and see round about it, no-one or thing else there but a large dish with very bright lights and a kinda mesh funnel, it was of course a moth/insect trap, being use by the local conservation group to survey the nocturnal population. The feeling of relief was immmense.

^^ had a similar experience

Crossing a fire road, in my peripheral vision I noticed a couple of lights like bike lights maybe 3-4 m above the ground and two more nearer the ground. Earlier in the ride I’d noticed some Land Rovers parked Where No One Else Usually Parks so I was kind of expecting something

Skidded round and went back to look it was dish on four wheels being pushed along by some lo-viz dudes 🙂

My brother’s a moth-er strange bunch hanging around at night with bright lights and no bikes.

I’m not scared of the woods, etc full stop. Scary dangerous people often hang around main streets in night time economies not woods like you see on the movies.

Are the grammmeer police the saddest people on here.

Riding in Leigh Woods, Bristol many years ago. It was dusk and it all felt a bit creepy Anyway stopped to adjust something and then looked out across the woods and saw a man standing there staring at me. Fair to say I cr*pped it and pedalled bloody fast out of there. Later learned that there was a tramp living in the woods. However always feel a bit unsettled when riding there on my own on a quiet day.

I saw an old episode of X Files a few months back where the woods were inhabited by ‘tree men’ who were basically invisible and killed people they thought were encroaching into their domain.

I know its a TV show but……..

[/url]Eye eye by martinddd, on Flickr[/img]

Stopped to open a gate and about half a dozen armed blokes in full camo climbed out of the ditches/woods/undergrowth on the other side of the gate

Happens around Farnborough all the time. Riding along one summer evening so not dark, see a Landrover parked up on the side of the fire road. Funny, I thought, what’s that doing there all on its own. Must be someone around *look look* don’t see anyone. Then saw a bloke, then suddenly about 30 blokes instantly appeared right next to me, sitting around chatting eating etc. That was pretty freaky.

Not as freaky as coming round a singletrack corner at speed to find myself literally staring down the barrel of a gun though.

That’s *almost* me when the soldiers were out. It was pretty much pitch dark except for my 5w halogen light…….. so pitch dark really.

Deer don’t shoot themselves. If you’re in the woods around first or last light chances are there’s someone with a rifle somewhere nearby.

Nah, i know what hunters look like, we’ve got dozens of them round here at the moment looking for Elk i think.

This was far more likely to be Army manoeuvres of some description.

Me and my mate used to ride in Broxbourne Woods every Wednesday night. In the middle is a wildlife park and you could always hear Elephants and lions roaring in the dark. Scary at first but as we didn´t get trampled or clawed we carried on anyway. A few people came out with us once but they never came again.
Then there´s the legend of the escaped Black Panther, easy to laugh off now but at 10 on a misty November night I was a believer.

I don’t like riding at the back on night rides due to it always being the guy at the back who gets picked off by Werewolves…….and we all know there are loads of them in the Surrey Hills.

I love a ‘Danger ride’.

Solo night ride, only 20k, but with no spares or tools, just a bottle of water as I don’t drink much in colder temps, and only out for maybe 90 minutes….

I’ve only had the walk of shame once…. 8)

this appeared in our garden just yestereve 😯