Old Boots

Old Boots is a creepy story about a group of friends who go camping in the woods one summer.

Old Boots

When I was in high school I loved camping. My dad bought me a tent, a gas lantern and a sleeping bag. During the summer, my friends and I liked to head out to different nature reserves and forest areas. We would pick a nice spot, set up the tent, build a fire, then sit back and watch the stars.

About a week before graduation, the three of us decided to have one last camping adventure before we all went off to college. We loaded the camping supplies into the back of my friend’s car and set off for a remote spot in the forest where we would spent the weekend.

By the time we started walking down the trail, it was raining pretty hard and we were all soaked. The trail was very overgrown and extremely muddy. On the way, one of my friends slipped in the mud and broke the gas lamp. That meant we had to make do with only one flashlight.

It was almost dark when we arrived at a clearing in the forest and began set up our tent. There was a pair of old black boots lying in the center of the clearing. One of my friends picked them up and flung them into the trees.

It was still raining too hard to make a fire, so we got into the tent and started telling each other scary stories in the dark.

It was about midnight when we first heard the footsteps.

The sound caught us off guard. There wasn’t supposed to be anybody else for miles. We were alone in the wilderness and suddenly, the silence of the night was broken by eerie, hollow footsteps that seemed to be coming straight towards our tent.

My stomach turned. I tried to tell myself it was just the rain. The three of us just huddled in the tent, staring at each other in the darkness, eyes wide with fright. We knew it wasn’t the rain.

Then we heard laughing. It sounded like a high-pitched chuckle.

My friend pulled out his pocket knife and held it tightly in his hand. We heard the crack of a branch, as if someone or something had stepped on it. The footsteps got heavier as they got closer to the tent and soon we heard heavy breathing outside.

We were all scared.

There was an odd scratching sound. The thing outside was lightly dragging its finger tips across the canvas material of the tent.

We all froze and listened. The breathing became a horrible rasping – almost wheezing.

My friend yelled out, “Whoever you are, you better get out of here! We have a gun and we’re not afraid to use it!”

We both looked at him. We didn’t have a gun.

From outside, there came another high-pitched cackle.

Before we could so much as move a muscle, we heard a zipper going down. We watched in horror as the zip on the front of the tent began to move slowly down. Someone or something was opening it from outside. My friend raised his knife.

Quick as a flash, he thrust it out through the opening in the tent and rammed it down into the dark.

The chuckling suddenly stopped.

We remained quiet for a few seconds and listened. The rain had stopped and it was deathly silent outside.

Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the flashlight and turned it on. Pulling back the flaps of the tent, I shone the light outside. There was a pair of old boots sitting right in front of the tent opening.

My friend’s knife was stuck right through the toe of the left boot.

Whoever or whatever had been wearing those old boots only seconds before, had completely vanished into the night.