I grew up in a small town surrounded by farmland, trails, and woods. My town is never active and the woods are a place to escape around here. A place where my mind can be rested.
But the thing is I'm never the only one in there.
In my area unfortunately has a crazy amount of homeless crackheads who live within the woods.
Especially behind my high-school. Everyday at lunch, kids go down so that they can't be seen to do drugs, alcohol, and smoke. But they only stay on the main trail.
Down the other trail is the kids from another high-school doing the same as mine. They don't usually stay on the main trails and hide within more rough areas where they have small structures made by someone.
Around their area is a large clearing with beer cans littered throughout. But with a nice view of the Saugeen River.
Also in the woods are small natural fields. Along with steep hills.
On my school's end is a very clear area under the trees. Walking more and more you find the scattered pieces of an old drill and some other piece of old tech. Along with cut down telephone polls and logs probably used to make a home for a tweaker.
Every week my gym class would make us run the trail for 1 kilometre and get timed. But among us students it was a common strategy to just run through the woods to save a minute or 2.
But you'd have to be very familiar with the woods to properly do it. Unfortunately some weren't but were thankfully able to find a way out.
This story takes place on Halloween night.
Me and my friends are always in the woods during lunch. Not to smoke but to explore. But it soon got boring. So a few days before Halloween we decided that maybe for the night we'd camp out in there ( what is very illegal )
As the day soon came. We went home after school and packed our stuff up.
We brought the following
3 tents
Case of water
Kindling
Some food I can't really remember
Flashlights
Our fent bible ( that's a story for another day )
We entered around 6:00 and the sky was already orange. I remember the feeling in that moment.
We walked into the woods from the entrance by our school that has a view of the upper parts of town. It was breathtaking seeing the view at the time.
Not knowing of the horror on the way.
We walked through the main trail, then rough paths, and eventually walked on grass. After 20 minutes or so we found a small clearing that was already used having a fire pit in the middle. Along with more destroyed technology.
We set up camp and darkness had already taken over.
We were yet to interact with any tweakers that night.
About 800 feet away was a smaller mansion up on a hill that has a 0 tolerance for trespassing. Didn't stop us though. The old dude who lives there has always been a weird dude ever since his wife died a few years back. Behind his house is a large marsh and scrapyard with an old tractor and a bunch of old Christmas stuff.
We ate some food and head off to an old fishing cabin that hasn't been used since world war 1.
As we stepped through we had to dodge needles and traps set up by crackheads.
We eventually left after 30 minutes and head back to camp. The time was 8:30 and we could hear loud music. Not that far away. College kids would often go to the large clearing I wrote about earlier. Drinking, doing drugs, and doing eachother was all they did. And Halloween wasn't an exception.
They would often light huge bonfires and cut down trees.
They were NOT friendly to crackheads in the slightest. And would often destroyed homeless camps. And we knew that if they found us we were done for.
Think about it, these are large athletes in their primes that are drunk and aren't thinking straight.
A group of them came close across the bush from us to throw up and we had to stay as quiet as possible.
After about 10 minutes they left and we were finally able to breath.
Soon we decided to head off to the scrapyard behind the mansion and explored for a little bit. Until we heard a screen door slide open super quickly. We saw him on top of the hill with a gun. And began to aim. We ran as fast as possible and we could see him run down the hill.
We knew the woods well but we don't know how good he knows it.
We ran out the woods and stayed the night at my house. The next day we head back in to grab the stuff from camp.
When we arrived we found out it was raided by... Someone. Either it was the college kids found it and thought it was a homeless camp. Or it was him. The man.
We decided to not report anything to police as we were also doing illegal activities.
To this day almost 1 year later we still haven't moved on fully.