This happened last year toward the end of October. And yes, it's technically an airshit story but not what you're thinking.
I play on a pretty good airsoft team and we go to quite a few regional and some national events for fun. We don't think we super leet Navy SEAL operators or anything like that, but we have been to milsim games before. I live in a Mountain state in the Western U.S.. and there are a lot of military bases out here. There's a camp in a bordering state that uses airsoft players to fill the "opfor" role for special forces who come to train at the base. Mostly the guys who train at the camp are airborne, National guard, and Green Berets.
When the SF guys (mostly Green Berets) come out to train, the camp will contact local/regional airsoft teams with a reputation to come be opfor so the SF guys can get in some real training, which is mostly CQB and MOUT as far as the airsofters are concerned (they obviously do a lot more specialty training and SERE type stuff because the camp is tens of thousands of acres).
The reason I'm explaining all this is because mentioning airshit on IVJ is suicide, but whatever. The story is very relevant to this thread and really doesn't have to do with airsoft.
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I promise the story gets interesting but I want to explain the background here.
Anyway, I'll get to the point. Our team went out to the camp for three days of MOUT/CQB training for the Green Berets. We played the first and second day on a small MOUT site they had set up. That night, we had just finished dinner when an SF guy came over and told us they got a call of a missing NG over the radio. We walked over and had a quick briefing with about 100 other guys, a few of them being fellow airsofters and the rest being military. Camp commander told us we were all being sent on search and rescue to find the missing Guardsman. His team was doing land-navthat day and he hadn't reported in by 1800 hours when the nav exercise was over. We got set up with NG radios and all got on the same channel with the military guys. We gathered what little survival gear we had brought, grabbed some chemlights and plenty of flashlights with extra batteries, put on heavy winter coats with caps and warm socks (temperature was expected to drop to 8 degrees that night).
Then we got a ride out to the NG team's area in some trucks and Hummers and began the search. Our team had 14 guys, so we divided into two "fireteams" (search teams this time around) and set out with one group heading due North and the other heading North-Northwest. Our plan was to check in by radio every 15 minutes with each other and with base command.
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After a 20 minute walk we get to the lost guy's last possible position (according to where he was supposed to be at that time on his land-nav). About a dozen guys are already there and tell us to head up and over a hill to our left, then follow a ravine North. Another 20 minutes go by and we're heading up the ravine. Like I mentioned earlier, it was late October so there were no leaves on the trees except for the pines obviously. We walked a few more minutes in the ravine, then hiked uphill on a small dirt path until we came to a crest on the ridge. It was too dark to see anything below us in front, and our flashlights weren't powerful enough to be useful past about 150 feet, so we switched on our 200 lumen taclights on our guns.
I've been in the forest during fall/winter months plenty of times, but this forest in front of us really creeped me out. All the trees were dead but very clustered, so it was still difficult to see through them. On both sides were small cliffs with pines, which blocked any moonlight and made the stand of trees that much darker. I could tell that a few other guys on our team were a little nervous too, but the fact that there were 7 of us total was some consolation.
Squad leader said we were going through it because walking on the ridges would be too dangerous in the dark, so we walked about 50 yards down to the edge of the forest. At that point we radioed back to command to let them know where we were, and that we were heading into the forest. We also got on the regular channel and let everyone else know too. Then we slipped into the dense forest single file and kept hiking. We kept in contact with each other by repeating "X still here", X being each of our names, every minute. This was especially important to keep track of our last man and make sure no one got lost.
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My god, the extreme butthurt in this thread is amazing. I never claimed to be an operator or a cool guy. Anyway, continuing with story.
So about 200 yards into this dense forest, we start to hear crackling and rustling noises at our 11 o'clock. We start calling out the name of the missing guy, but get no response. We radioed everyone and let them know what was going on. At that point, we hung a couple chemlights on trees to mark our last position in case anyone else came through, and then we continued.
We had only gone about another mile when we started to hear very loud screaming coming from straight ahead, probably about 100 yards away. We all took a knee along either side of our path and stayed as quiet as possible. The screams stopped, and after about 4 minutes of silence we were almost ready to move on when suddenly the screaming started again, but this time it was coming from our 10 o'clock. After a few seconds, our team leader turned around to say something but the screaming started again, this time on our 2 o'clock. We all perked up at that point, and soon there were multiple screams coming everywhere from our 10 to 2. We figured that it had to be animals because there was no one else out there and only one guy was missing.
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It doesn't, I promise. I only troll M with that shit, and usually my troll posts are only 2 or 3 posts long before spaghetti dinosaurs. I'm getting to the interesting part.
We kept advancing, and the screams continued, still staying from our 10 to 2 as we moved forward. After about 150 yards we thought we would be right in the center of whatever was screaming, but it was still coming from in front of us. Squad lead stopped, turned, and told us he heard running water up ahead.
After a few more feet we came to a small stream. We crossed carefully on some stones, then moved another 200 feet or so until we came to a sunken area in the forest where there was a 20 foot gap/clearing between the trees. We paused, gathered round, then decided to try to catch the animals off guard and maybe catch a glimpse of some reflective eyes in the distance. The screaming was still going on, but hadn't gotten louder or quieter with us moving forward. We all lined up and turned on our taclights at the same time, aiming straight ahead. The screaming stopped instantly. All I could see was the row of grey, dead trees right in front of us and pure darkness right behind them.

The hair on my arms was completely raised at that point because whatever had been screaming knew we were there once we turned on our lights. We were about to shift positions and move into better cover when we heard an EXTREMELY loud roar come from our front. I've heard bears, mountain lions, and other wilderness critters roar before, and this was like nothing I'd ever heard. It definitely wasn't human, and wasn't any recognizable animal either. We all immediately trained our lights on where we heard the roar and went to prone. Some of the guys started to whisper "Jesus Christ” and "shit", but stopped as soon as another roar came from behind us. In a few seconds the roars were coming from 360 degrees, and suddenly we heard one come from our 8 o'clock that sounded like it was only a few feet away.
Our squad leader got up on one knee and said "Get up, we're moving NOW" in an urgent no-fucking-around voice. We all stood up and immediately starting sprinting toward our 1 o'clock, the opposite direction of the closest roar. I don't remember how long we ran, only jumping over logs and trying not to get caught on branches or dead grass. When the path was clear of debris, I would shine my light to my left through the trees for a couple seconds, then switch back to the path to see where I was going. The roaring kept coming from both sides and seemed to close in on us. Luckily I never saw anything with my light while I was running; I didn't want to see but at the same time it was almost worse not knowing what was chasing us.
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Sorry about that, not trying to troll you. I seriously can't type tonight to save my life and I'm correcting every word I write.
We finally reached a riverbank and all of us literally leaped about 12 feet across because our adrenaline was pumping so hard. When we landed on the other side we scrambled up a hill with some pines and hid behind the trees, although we were only a few feet from each other. We kept our lights scanning the treeline below us. My adrenaline was really going at that point and my entire body felt like it was about 1/10th the weight of what it actually was. That was the most intense fight-or-flight moment of my life. Although my vision was sharp, my hearing was crystal clear and I didn't really feel weight, all because of the adrenaline, I managed to keep my arms steady and my light pointed below us. After a couple minutes I realized something was rattling heavily to my left. I checked over my shoulder and saw my teammate shaking so hard his gear was rattling around like all hell on his body. I shifted my position and put my hand on his shoulder, but he immediately jerked his arm so hard my hand went flying. I looked right into his eyes, and I have never seen that much fear in my entire life. His pupils were dilated so much that I almost couldn't see the whites of his eyes.
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I tell my buddy that we put some distance between ourselves and whatever was chasing us, and that we're ok. Luckily he hasn't totally lost it yet. and nods to acknowledge what I said. We sit up on the hill for about 10 full minutes just trying to get our shit together and let the adrenaline subside. Finally, I scoot over to squad lead and ask for his radio, he fumbles for a minute, then hands it to me with a shaking hand. I'm pretty sure I was the most level-headed one in our team right then, so I called on the radio to let the other teams know what was happening. It took me about two minutes of uninterrupted talking on the radio to explain our situation, because I was badly shaken and had to repeat and correct myself every two seconds. Soon there was radio traffic reporting the same type of thing with other squads, which made us feel slightly relieved until we realized that whatever was roaring wasn't just isolated to one area.
At that point we decided to get the hell out of the area and stay on ridges where we at least had some visibility below us and weren't surrounded by a dense grove of dead trees. We walked about a half mile along the ridge, then we had to drop down onto a dirt path because the hilltop was too steep to continue. After some more walking we came to a small cluster of the same dead trees, although we were on the opposite side of the hill where we were chased. We were still on edge though, and slowly approached the tress with our lights off and no communication. When we were about 25 feet away we saw some movement and immediately froze in place. My adrenaline kicked in again and I thought "this is it, no more running, it's going to attack us right here, right now in the middle of nowhere and no one, not my family, not my friends will know what happened to me".
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Before I had the chance to swing my light up, four lights beamed in our direction, blinding us. "Search team?" It took us a few seconds, but both the squad leader and I said yes at the same time. The guys in the trees pointed their lights down and told us to come toward them. I thought my team was scared to death, but these four guys were white as sheets. They asked if we had heard the the howling and screaming too, and we replied yes, that we had just been chased a few minutes earlier. They said the same thing had happened to them, only they had stayed in place and had been stalked/circled until they heard us approaching a few hundred feet away.
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After we linked up with the four new guys, we got the hell out of there and continued North hoping to find some other squads, just to increase our numbers and feel safer. About 5 minutes into the walk, I heard a loud thump behind me and everyone immediately turns around expecting to see whatever had been roaring. We see a man down, laying on his stomach but still moving. We all thought he had been attacked, but he got up onto his knees and started slapping his chest, indicating he had the wind knocked out of him. All he did was point down to his right. As we looked closer we saw a piece of rebar where his foot was. and some concrete right under it. We all gathered around him, someone helped him up, and the two squad leads decided to check the area to our 4 o'clock for the rest of the concrete structure. We only fanned out a few feet to sweep, but within a few minutes we had found a small clearing with a large cement square in the middle. There were metal railings blocking off the center of the cement, and metal line bisecting the center of it all. We quickly realized that we were looking at a nuclear silo placed in the middle of nowhere.
cont.

A few of the guys start talking about how we should take shelter inside the silo, but most of the others are quick to say no, that it's too dangerous and will waste time. Still, a few people find the entrance (basically a manhole a few feet away) and pull off the cover. We start going over a couple guys at a time to check it out. When I go over there, I shine my taclight down through the hole and circle around to get a better angle. I can see there's a ladder that goes down quite a ways, but it's not until I step up to the edge of the hole that I can see the ladder goes about 50 feet down into pitch blackness, and there are several levels below it too. I started to get chills just looking down there... it's hard to explain, but it made me feel very uneasy, like something was staring back from the darkness. I stepped away and sat down on the railing with a guy from our search team. I could see he was shaking slightly and as I looked at his face, I saw he was crying a little too. He was only 16, one of the younger players on our team. I told him that we would be ok. and then I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I told him to breathe like I was so he would feel better. We started breathing in unison for a couple minutes, which definitely helped both of us. After we came to the unanimous conclusion that we weren't going down into the silo, a couple guys yelled down inside just to be sure the missing man wasn't in there. We all knew he wasn't, but we wanted to reassure ourselves we were doing our best to find him since everything else had gone to shit. I had almost forgotten about our original search mission with everything else that had happened.
cont.

Only another minute passed and I heard the radio chatter again, this time about calling off the search because of "adverse conditions". The squad leaders said we needed to move a mile and a half to our East-Southeast to meet up with some Hummers that were coming to get us. We collected all of our stuff and got moving quickly. We moved in pairs and numbered off so we didn't lose anyone. Basically, we kept repeating our numbers up the line (9, 10, 11 up! 7 and 8 up! 5 and 6 up!), and once we got to 1 and 2 we started at the back of the line. After about 3 minutes of jogging we heard a deep, low moaning sounds, but it was reverberating throughout the whole valley we were in. Another couple minutes in and the trees starting getting way too close together, so tight the we had to slow down and slip single file between the branches and trunks. Right after we had all squeezed through, we heard a piercing shrieking sound, which was immediately followed by the most blood-chilling roar we had heard yet. It echoed 3 times in the dense forest, and that's when we went into serious panic mode. We flat out sprinted the rest of the distance, about one mile, while yelling out our individual numbers occasionally. There were 5 grown men out of the 11, and the rest were all older than 16; I didn't hear a single voice the whole time that DIDNT sound absolutely panicked and terrified. I could hear the urgency in everyone as we ran. I started to get light headed from sprinting 3/4 of a mile, but somehow kept going until I heard a loud whump behind me. and then a dull groaning sound that you only hear when someone impacts the ground hard.
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I yelled for my running buddy to come back, then looked behind me and saw the last guy in line, #11, slowly rolling over on the ground. We both ran over, scooped him up under his arms, and got him on his feet. That was the moment I looked up and caught	an incredibly quick flash of whatever was following us.
I can't describe what I saw; it was only a shadow in the trees about 100 feet away, but it looked much larger than any bear I had seen. As we turned our friend around, I noticed that an 8 inch thick log I had jumped over a few seconds earlier was now broken in half on the path with splinters everywhere. Something roared loudly about 10 feet to our left in the trees next to us. That was our cue to get the fuck out, and everything after that happened in frames because I was in absolute flight mode. I remember seeing lights pointing at us as we ran the last couple hundred yards to the Hummers with our buddy. He kept saying "I don't want to be the last one in! Let me get in first, oh god let me get in first! DONT LEAVE ME BEHIND I DONT WANT TO BE LAST!" I’ve never heard that much panic in anyone's voice before or since. As we got within a few yards of the Hummer I looked up and saw the gunner, who had swung the .50 cal in our direction. I saw fear in his eyes, and he wasn't one of the guys on our team. He was a Guardsman, fully trained and a grown man. and he was truly scared. We threw our friend in the back of the 3rd Hummer, then #10 climbed in, and finally I effortlessly hopped 4 feet into the cargo area. The gunner called out "Contact 3 o'clock!" and asked if he could engage, but the vehicle commander said no and told the driver to step on it and get out. No one said a word on the way back to the base.
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When we got back even the Green Beret guys were watching the horizon and looking very worried. The National Guard guys were freaked out, and pretty much everyone else was shaking like a leaf and didn't respond to questions right away.
I don't know what the hell we saw out there, but it wasn't a bear or a mountain lion, and even the military guys had seen it/them because they called out contacts and were ready to engage.
I've had goosebumps the entire time I've been writing this because of the memories. I haven't told this story before until now.
Sorry for taking forever to finish the posts, it's late and I'm tired and can't type. By the way, this happened at a large military camp/base in Wyoming last year. Apparently they never found the NG guy who was lost, even when they sent out helicopters with thermal imaging.

That was basically it. They never found the guy, command staff sent out trained search and rescue teams over the next few weeks, and everyone who was out looking that night got debriefed with basically "don't ever fucking talk about anything that happened out there". We all drove back home after that.
It took most of us weeks to get over what happened. And by get over, I mean get it off our minds so we weren't thinking about it 24/7. Every time I see a line of dead trees at night, my stomach tightens into a knot and I have to control my breathing. I haven't gone camping in the last year. Other than that, there's not much else to say.