Anomalous zone. United States

This story was recently published on the website of the American researcher of mysterious creatures Lon Strickler.

We ran, trying to get to our car, but this feeling haunted us. As we rounded one of the turns, we heard an unearthly scream, like a cross between the grinding of metal on metal and a discordant choral cry.

Two tourists in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia (USA) experienced a strange sensation, accompanied by a loud "metal on metal"sound. They lost consciousness, and after 2 hours they woke up in their car.

My friend and I are avid tourists. Recently in July, we went on another trip and decided to initially camp in our favorite place west of the Shenandoah National Forest. It's quiet, completely remote, and offers absolutely breathtaking views of the Shenandoah and parts of the George Washington National Forest to the west.

The first day and evening here went well and without any adventures, although we did not sleep very well due to the high humidity. The next morning, we decided to go hiking in a part of the Jefferson National Forest that we had both never been to before.

It consists of ATV trails and about a dozen campsites, but there is one trail that leads to the old fire tower, which we always wanted to go through. This place was about a 45-minute drive from our campsite, mostly on country roads.

When we arrived there, the first thing that caught my eye was how deserted the local campsites were. In fact, we didn't camp there the night before just because we heard that this place is usually very crowded with tourists and we decided that there wasn't enough space for us there. However, we now saw that only two campsites out of all were occupied there.

In one place there was an old dried-up tent and a pile of garbage, as if someone had been here for some time, but when we arrived, he had already left there. In another there was a young woman, she was setting up a small tourist tent. There were only two cars in the parking lot - one with a trailer, the other smaller.

We put our car in the parking lot and began to disassemble our equipment, when this woman came up to us and asked if we knew exactly where this trail begins. I told her that we had read that it branches off about 100 yards from one of the ATV trails, but we weren't 100% sure which one.

Since I began to feel quite strange vibes from this place, I hoped that this woman would go with us, but she just thanked us and then left in the direction where the trail supposedly began.

Then we both set off and walked up and down several ATV trails until we found the right path. We saw two quad bikes pass by us at one point, but otherwise we didn't meet anyone here, including a woman who got out here before us.

In about an hour we climbed to the top of the mountain, where there was a fire tower. It's an old metal structure and you have to climb a narrow ladder to get to it. We got up, looked around, took a few pictures and moved down (to be honest, the view from there was not very pleasant).

About halfway down, very suddenly, everything seemed to freeze, the birds disappeared and the insects stopped flying, a dead silence reigned. And I do not know how to put it in words, but it seemed to me that the antiquity of the forest is bent and it crushes us. I felt trapped and cornered. My friend and I looked at each other and then silently hurried to the exit from the trail.

We ran, trying to get to our car, but this feeling haunted us. As we rounded one of the turns, we heard an unearthly scream, like a cross between the grinding of metal on metal and a discordant choral cry.

And we saw something, however, I only caught a glimpse of it before we lost consciousness. I do not know how to describe it, except that it looked huge, despite the fact that it clearly did not take up much physical space and moved in curves and flashes. It had no color, it was like evil and emptiness. I probably only perceived it for half a second before my memory completely went nowhere.

When we woke up, we were sitting in our car, and it turned out that two hours had passed, which is twice as long as it took us to get from the mountain to the parking lot. I don't know if we lost consciousness or if our memory somehow blocked the memories of these two hours. Those two cars were parked next to us in the parking lot, and there were still only two tents on the campsite.

However, the woman was not in her tent and this place now looked abandoned, like the first tent. Since then, I've been thinking about her all the time and spent a lot of time trying to find out if any of the people in this place disappeared during our trip there.

It took me and my friend a few months to have a normal conversation about that day. We still love hiking, but to be honest, since this happened, we haven't had the opportunity to visit the Appalachian Forests again. I'm curious if others have had similar experiences.