Two sisters on a back porch in the Appalachian mountains say a spirit box answered “behind you,” and a loud crack in the trees followed at that exact moment.
The account comes from Reddit user One_Combination9417, who posted it this week in a forum about Appalachian paranormal stories under the title “I think there’s something in the woods behind my house.” The poster says they have lived in the mountains all their life, so hearing strange things and knowing not to talk about them is nothing new.
A Thin Strip of Woods
The poster has lived in the house for about eight years. Behind it is a thin line of woods, about 20 feet wide, that runs for roughly two miles in both directions. Beyond the trees is an open field with power lines. The poster points out that this is not a giant, dense forest, which is part of why the whole thing feels so strange.
Every night, the poster goes out to the back porch, the part of the house closest to the woods, to relax, get some air, and have a smoke. Their sister always comes along. As the poster puts it, there is safety in numbers.
Sounds That Were Not a Squirrel
For a couple of nights, the sisters heard leaves shuffling. It did not sound like an animal to them. It sounded “almost like we can hear the steps.” They also heard branches breaking in the trees, big ones, and the snaps sounded aggressive. Each time they shined a light, nothing was there.
There was more. They could hear something jumping from tree to tree and shaking the entire tree each time, and these are decent-sized trees. The poster grew up in the woods and says they know what a squirrel sounds like. This was not that.
The Spirit Box Session
A couple of weeks into the noises, the sisters were having drinks on the porch. The poster says the house is definitely haunted, that they knew it from the day they moved in, and that they have even communicated, safely, with the ghost that lives there. So after a few drinks, they decided to take out the spirit box. They did not stop to think that they were now outside, and possibly talking to something very different.
They started with the usual opening, asking if anyone was there who wanted to communicate. The box replied yes. Then they asked where it was. The reply, the poster says, was “behind you.” At that very moment, a loud snap or bang came from the trees.
The sisters froze and stared at each other. Then they grabbed their things and ran inside. They did not talk about what had happened, and the poster says part of them knew they could not. Their closing worry is simple: “I think we made it worse.” They want to be able to go outside without feeling like something is toying with them.
What Commenters Suggested
User Alchemist2211 warned that people can get into trouble communicating with certain entities. They suggested the thin woods work like a hedgerow that animals use to travel, and said power lines can create strong electromagnetic fields that may cause visual and auditory hallucinations or even pull in entities. Their first thought was a cryptid such as a crawler or a dogman. After doing some research and finding nothing, they wondered whether a demon, or a demon and a cryptid together, was involved. User thetrivialsublime99 replied that nothing in that comment had a basis in reality and asked for evidence that power lines open portals or that dogmen exist.
The poster leaned toward a different idea. They said they have always believed in Bigfoot, that they feel aliens could cloak themselves, and that they have had UFO encounters and even lost time after seeing one. They also said they are starting to think it is “a dimension thing,” since they can never see it.
The most practical advice came from user Limp_Insurance_2812, who has had odd experiences in small suburban woods and says size does not matter. Their suggestions were flood lights, a camera on the house facing the woods, a few trail cams placed in the trees, and ignoring the whole thing. They also advised closing the curtains, not going out alone, and not feeding the thing fear. Another commenter suggested saging the house, putting salt around it, and setting boundaries and rules. User MFparanormal said to stop communicating immediately. The poster says they have stopped, though their curiosity is hard to fight.
The Skeptical Read
Several readers pointed to a simpler answer. User alltoovisceral asked if it could be a black bear, and user Glittering-Duck-8533 said a tree line like this is often a game trail used at night by bears, deer, opossums, and raccoons. Their advice was to set up a trail camera and see how much traffic really passes through. User Individual-Guest-123 added that you would usually see eyeshine, and told of shining a light around their own woods and finding themselves surrounded by glowing eyes from deer, coyotes, and other animals. The poster answered that it is definitely not a black bear, since the wood line is so thin they would see one clearly with a light.
Skeptics would also look at the spirit box itself. These devices sweep rapidly through radio stations and produce short bursts of sound and speech. With enough random fragments, a word or phrase can seem to answer a question, especially when a person is hoping for a reply. A loud crack from the trees at the same time may be a coincidence that the mind ties together. That does not explain the shaking trees, but it does show why a trail camera would be the most useful next step.
Where That Leaves Us
The poster says they plan to try ignoring it for a few days and then update the thread. That is a reasonable plan, and it is the one most commenters backed. If a trail camera ever catches what is shaking those trees, it will tell us whether we are dealing with a very busy game trail or something stranger.
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