A strange man hunted me through a national park

I was camping alone in a remote wilderness area when I woke and found a man sitting beside the remains of my fire, only a few feet from my tent. He had no visible pack or supplies. When he saw me, his eyes widened and he ran away.

The encounter shook me, but I eventually tried to explain it as a coincidence. I assumed that the man might have been lost or intoxicated and had somehow made camp nearby.

Later, while sitting beside another fire, I heard movement in the darkness. I called out, and a man asked whether I knew how to reach a place I had never heard of. He stayed just outside the beam of my flashlight and continued asking random questions. When I aimed the light toward him, he told me to point it away.

After several minutes, the voice seemed closer. I aimed the light in that direction again and saw the same man who had been sitting outside my tent. He had somehow reached another campsite far away through wilderness where there was no obvious shared route. As soon as the light touched him, he ran.

I ended the trip immediately and began hiking out. I changed direction repeatedly, doubled back, and sometimes hid to see whether anyone was following me. It was terrifying to feel hunted while moving through the forest and to keep thinking about how to avoid being attacked.

During the first night of the hike out, I heard footsteps circling my tent twice. By the time I looked outside, no one was there. The next night, I heard sounds in the distance that first resembled an animal but gradually seemed more like a person imitating animal calls. I never saw the man again, but I could not convince myself that the sounds were unrelated.

When I finally reached my vehicle and left the wilderness, the relief was overwhelming. I still do not know who the man was or what he intended. I only know that he appeared beside my tent, found me again after I moved far away, and ran whenever I tried to see him clearly. It remains one of the most frightening experiences of my life.