This tale isn’t about a ghost. It’s about something that we saw a few years ago that makes me think either cryptid or very strange person. It still bothers me. Opinions would be nice.
My family and I like to go hiking. We live in the tidewater area of Virginia, and one place we used to visit frequently was Beaverdam Park. It has several trails, a few of which are quite long. The one we were on that day was around 7 miles up and back. Beaverdam Park is located around the Beaverdam reservoir, a beautiful lake created when they dammed up a part of the Beaverdam swamp. It is full of wildlife and some plants that are on the endangered list. The area still has some deep woods, and a huge area of undeveloped swampland or drainage.
It was early summer and pretty hot. It was in the middle of the week and not crowded at all. We decided to try a trail that led around an arm of the lake, and ended at a campsite the Boy Scouts used on the other side. The trail has small wooden bridges that cross feeder streams at several places. We were at the halfway point, where the trail crosses over to the other side of the lake. To get there, we were crossing a bridge over a place near the shore that was drying up from lack of rain and the heat. On one side of the bridge there was still some water and lots of leopard frogs. We stood and watched them for a while. On the other side of the bridge it was flat, drying mud. Here’s where it gets strange.
There was a line of footprints in the middle of the mud, going off into some bayberry bushes about 20 feet away. It looked like someone had been sitting on the bridge, got up and walked off, through the mud, and into the woods. There were no footprints on the side where the frogs were. The prints were perfectly human looking, around 10 inches long, toes all in the right places, high arch, and had a stride of maybe two feet apart. They were so out of place we were looking for anything abnormal about them. Whoever it was wasn’t in a hurry, they were just nonchalantly strolling through some mud. Oh yes, they were fresh! They showed dampness in them, not like the rest of the mud that had formed a dry crust. We had our child with us so we were talking and making plenty of noise. You could hear us from a long way off. Whoever it was heard us and moved.
Who would choose to go through the mud to get to the other side? Why not use the rest of the bridge and walk on the dry bank? Shoes? I’d wear my shoes and clean them off later. They weren’t worried about sharp sticks or broken glass. The bushes on that side were pretty tangled. I couldn’t make out where they had been disturbed by something going through them. We looked around for whoever was there and didn’t see or hear anyone. We were getting that feeling of being watched and decided not to investigate further.
We continued on to the campsite, and had no problems or other odd occurrences. We didn’t meet anyone else on the trail. On our way back, we had to cross the same bridge, and nothing had changed. We weren’t getting the feeling of being watched this time though.
Now there are some strange folks living in this area. Local color like any other small town. But who prefers to go walking barefoot through the mud like that? This had that feeling of “wrongness”, and not someone playing a joke. We no longer go there much anymore. I don’t want to meet whoever/whatever it was. If anyone has a rational explanation for this behavior, or has had a similar experience please let me know. Thanks!
Written by “MWS”, Copyright 2009 TrueGhostTales.com
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hey there’s a bever dale i know about but its in the midwest but if this a old trail in a park like there are chances are your’re gonna see signs of people that have passed through heavy rains and bear feet go together did you see animal tracks too??
was the creature realy big?
I must say, I love to walk bare foot, and I, for some strange reason, detest shoes. Just to let you know, I hope this doesn’t cause much problems for you in the future.
Probably a bigfoot like creature.
I think you over reacted. I mean what’s the big deal? I thought this article was about an actual sighting. Sounds like you came up on a local teen/young adult just chillin. Might even be tending his/her “garden”. Go figure.
So u saw human footprints that had absolutely nuthin abnormal about them then proceeded to see nuthin…….and u posted this on a ghost stories site???????
Something similar happened to me when back around 2000. I was living in Newton, Iowa at the time at the edge of a timber. I used to walk and explore the timber for fun, and one winter I decided to explore with about 4-5 inches of snow on the ground. I walked and walked and walked until I was very far from any houses, and what did I see on the ground below a bare, nearby bush? A single, very distinctive, BARE, human-looking footprint.
Just one lonely footprint in the snow… No prints leading to or from it. I was puzzled… And soon very creeped out with that same very strong feeling of being watched.
That timber was a creepy place. I was afraid to leave the back hallway at night where the bedrooms and the bathrooms were because the rest of the house had floor to celing architectural windows looking right into the timber. I always felt like I was being watched when I would go to the kitchen at night.