Was it real?

This is my first post on here.

So this takes place about a year ago during my senior year in high school. At this point in time I had a good amount of mental troubles I kept hidden from my friends and family. Me and a group of friends had gone camping in a big forest area with adult supervision and I was pretty excited since I don’t get out much(parents words not mine). When we arrived there it a pretty big are and a little intimidating because it looked like you could get lost easy and it especially didn’t help the fact that my teacher had told us that people get lost occasionally and that their were bears out there. Even so I swallowed my inner fear and enjoyed the beauty of the woods.

Our teacher had told us that this wooded area was a special place because it was a right of passage for young men to evolve into men and a place to confront our demons and guilt. He said that after staying at base camp for 2 days, that we would pick our own camping area away from camp to stay at for 4 days and could not engage in any human contact. Sounded terrifying but I figure it as a challenge. Plus I figured he was just trying to scare us since it got really dark in the woods. Like no light at all,pitch black.

Anyway,the day comes and we’re sent to our individual spots. After being bored for a few hours, night approached and I realized these four nights were gonna be hell but not for the reason I thought. As I laid in my tarp,which I had set up as a hamic,hearing the breeze blow in the night, I had caught a different noise. It had sounded like something big was walking slowly and since there were leaves everywhere, I could tell how close and how fast it was moving. I figured it was a bear and the thought,of it attacking, terrified me so I thought of yelling to scare it away. I yelled as loud as I could and soon I heard the russles of it running away. Mind you that at this point im shaking from fear and panicking a lot. I wanted to be sure it was gone so I took a look outside my tarp. In front of me was nothing but pitch black woods but when I looked behind me, I had saw nothing but these pure white eyes staring directly at me.

Now most would think it was just another animal but I could see its frontal figure and it was nothing animal based and that terrified me. Being how scared I was, I decided to get out of my tarp and run away from it(yes I know,not the smartest idea but I was scared). I ran as fast I could in the opposite direction from it with my heart beating the fastest its ever gone. I had no idea which direction I ran or where I was going, all I thought was I had to be away from it. I could hear that something was following because of the sound of the leaves crushing and I tried to speed up my pace but as soon as I did, I fell over a hole that was in the ground. At this point I was terrified and honestly thought whatever this thing was that it was gonna eat me or kill me.

I turned around to this thing in my face and it was like a creature made up from a horror movie. It looked at me with its white eyes and at this point I had tears pouring down my eyes. I honestly thought I was gonna be ripped to pieces and left to die in these woods.

All it did was stare at me and I was frozen from fear. I didn’t want to speak or move cause every second was important to me. As it seemed forever and my tears stoped running, I was confused and irritated as to why it did nothing but stare at me. I finally gained the guts and yelled at it to “hurry up and do it”. As I did so, it lunged at me and I had closed my eyes ready for the pain. Nothing happened and as I opened my eyes it wasn’t there. As confused as I was I decide to spend the rest of that night where I was and I had spent it crying my eyes out.

Honestly I’m confused as if it was real or not. I often see and hear thing that arent real and I’ve dealt with the issue of wanting to kill myself. I always think of how my teacher said that the place would help us deal with inner troubles,guilts and demons but it felt so real. Any other time I saw things, it was just glimpses in the corner of my eyes but this thing was too real.

Whatever it was real or not I don’t know but that was just 1 out of the 4 things that happened while I was in those woods alone.

I’ll try to post my other events when I can.