We had been in the woods for a couple of days, and as a normal event, had been knocking on a tree in the camp. Three of us were sitting around the campfire, mid-day, and one of the individuals would go to a pine tree, and hit it firmly with a large post. He would normally hit it three times very rhythmically. Early afternoon, while sitting and digesting our lunch, when Mark had just hit the tree three times, there was a response of three knocks. We all looked at each other, and kind of giggled. A few minutes later, Mark did the same thing and, again, we got the same response. Over the next hour, as we would knock on the tree, we would get sporadic responses that kind of slowly went around our camp. We discussed the possibility of somebody hoaxing us and the more we talked about it, the more concerned I became. I am a firm believer if you hear a noise outside of your tent, look outside. I really dislike stories of "bumps in the night" sort and so we devised a plan. We were camped on a dead-end road with only one way in. It had rained recently, so we would be able to see if any car tracks were there. Some of the knocks came from a swamp that was to the east of us. It was pretty much impenetrable and I jokingly said that if anybody walked the 4 miles of swamps to hoax us, then they had earned the right to expect us to believe.
Anyway, we had walkie talkies and I took one with me and left the camp in a car. As I left the two-track road, I got out and inspected the sand road for auto tracks and there weren't any. I reported this to the camp. Then I went down the road, next to a beaver pond, where there was another campsite and checked there to see if somebody had been there. They hadn't. Then I knocked on trees and the camp reported they could barely hear them and they sounded nothing like the ones we had been listening to for the past hour or more.
I came back to camp and we again knocked on the trees, but we didn't get any response. After about a half hour of intermittent knocking, I went into the woods and proceeded to hit on trees until the camp agreed that the volume was about right for a comparison. Ironically, it was much closer than I would have expected. In fact, in a couple of instances, I was able to see the camp and they were able to see me. The distance ranged between 150 to 300 feet, depending on the thickness of the vegetation. The furthest distance was across a power line that was barren of vegetation. We looked for sign of any of the trees being hit and didn't find any. Of course, there are a lot of trees in a forest and we didn't check them all. I think that we all were just a little confused about what we just experienced and after reflection, we became convinced that we had a serious wood knocking encounter.
Comments or questions?
