I have seen weird lights, heard weird sounds, found weird stuff in the woods before, but the one that sticks out was years ago. I was camping at a friend’s property in South Texas. While asleep in my tent, I suddenly wake up in the middle of the night. One of those ‘from dead sleep to wide awake in a half-second’ things. I can feel something is outside the tent, but I don’t want to look. I have considerable camping/hiking experience, so I am not freaking out too much.

I very slowly unzip the top of the tent door, being as quiet as I can, and look out of the tent. There is scarce light because we were camped under a giant oak tree, so big the branches dip down and connect with the ground before growing back up again. It is a huge tree and there are a lot of shadows and weird shapes.

Anyway, as my eyes start to adjust I realize there are about 40+ coyotes all milling around the camp sight! Just slowly walking around, sniffing here and there, almost ghost like in their quietness. I slowly zipped the flap back up and laid there for about 30 minutes before I fell back to sleep. In the morning, in the light, you couldn’t tell anything had been there. The next night we heard the pack howling for hours in the distance. That was almost freakier than seeing them 10 feet away.