Late afternoon on a loop trail near home, two guys step off to handle a friend getting sick.

Minutes stretch into that ugly kind of quiet, where the woods get darker faster than the sky,

and when the girlfriends finally spot Jay in the tree line, he won't answer, he won't come closer,

and his eyes aren't his. Welcome back to alone in the woods.

I'm Darkness prevails, and tonight a phone rings from deeper in the trees. The person they're

calling to stays just out of reach. And when the real boyfriend finally comes crashing out of the brush, he looks like he's been

running for his life.

From there, we'll hear about a harpy-like bird man, seen in northern England, a cheap cabin

trip where tall shapes test the house, a Michigan lake stay that ends when something is

seen standing upright at the

tree line, and a backyard hammock night, where rising eyes and answering calls surround a home.

Have a story of your own? Send it to darkstories.org or eeriecast.com slash outdoor.

And if you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review. It helps more than you know.

Now, throw another log on the fire because the night is still young.

We think we saw a skinwalker or a mimic from Shady German.

I'm posting this here because I genuinely don't know what we saw, and I'm still trying to make sense of it.

This happened about a month ago. It was me, my best friend Chelsea and our boyfriends. I'm calling them J&M for privacy. The woods I'm

talking about are near my house. They aren't some huge wilderness, but they're big enough that

once you're in there, you lose sight of the road and houses pretty fast. I want to be honest

up front. I don't like the woods. I never have. I'm not one of those people

who thinks it's peaceful. I'm always the person who hears one random crack and starts imagining

the worst. So when Chelsea suggested we go for a walk out there, My first answer was no. Chelsea kept pushing,

...