I Shouldn’t Have Gone to Redwood Forest

I took a trip to Shadow Falls, Massachusetts to visit a friend of mine from college. He’d just moved there a few months earlier and kept telling me how much he liked it, so I figured I’d come out for a few days and see the place for myself.

The plan was simple. Coffee in Midtown, then a hike in the mountains just outside the city. While we were sitting in the booth at the coffee shop, talking through the details of the hike, I asked him what the trail was called.

“Redwood Forest,” he said. The moment he said it, I noticed someone staring at us.

An older man sat alone in the booth beside ours. He had been drinking his coffee, but now his cup was sitting untouched on the table, his eyes locked on us. Not curious but Focused.

My friend noticed it too.

After a few uncomfortable seconds, we politely asked if everything was okay, if there was something he needed. The man leaned forward slightly and, in a low, raspy voice, said, “You can’t go there.”

We exchanged a look. “Go where?” I asked.

His eyes didn’t blink. “If you go to Redwood Forest,” he said, “you may never return the same again.” My friend laughed nervously and asked him why.

The old man reached into his jacket with a shaking hand and pulled out a pen. He grabbed the napkin beneath his coffee cup and began to draw. He was slow and deliberate. When he finished, he slid the napkin across the table toward us.

It was a trail map.

Not detailed like a real one, but very specific with turns, bends, markings, all laid out in a way that felt intentional.

“If you go,” he said, “you follow this exactly. If you don’t, you won’t make it back.” My friend thanked him politely and said we had plenty of hiking experience. The old man’s posture stiffened.

“You take it,” he said sharply.

His voice became firm, loud enough that a coffee shop employee stepped over to make sure everything was alright. I assured her we were fine. As we stood to leave, I felt a strong instinct telling me not to walk away without that napkin. So, I grabbed it and slipped it into my back pocket before my friend noticed.

As we left, the employee apologized for the man’s behavior. She told us he was a war veteran, a former park ranger, and that he’d been struggling with dementia for years.

I felt bad. I chalked it up to that and tried to forget about it. Then we drove to Redwood Forest anyway.

When we arrived, it was beautiful, the oak trees were massive. The scenery was very naturistic. The kind of place people go to escape from the outside world. We loaded our backpacks with water, trail mix, and basic supplies, then followed the trail.

At first, everything felt normal.

But the farther we went, the denser the forest became. The trees started blocking out the sunlight, and it got darker fast. Patches of sunlight appeared in the distance, just enough to see where we were going.

That’s when we saw the backpack.

It was torn open, with belongings scattered across the ground like someone had flung it into the air. There was a phone, wallet and Clothes.

None of it made sense.

I picked up the wallet and put it in my pocket, thinking maybe we’d run into whoever it belonged to further down the trail.

A few steps later, the sunlight hit something else. At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at as something pale laid across the dirt ahead of us, half-covered in leaves. My brain tried to make sense of it until we got closer, and the shape became impossible to ignore.

It was a leg. A human leg.

Severed cleanly at the thigh, the edges torn and uneven, like it had been ripped away with force instead of cut. The skin had already started to turn gray, covered in mud and darkened blood. I screamed louder than I thought I could. My friend pulled out his phone, trying to get a signal whilst turning in a slow circle.

That’s when the forest behind him went silent.

No wind.
No insects.
Nothing.

Then the trees started to separate like they were being forced apart. Tree trunks groaned and snapped as something massive pushed through them. I opened my mouth to warn him, but before sound came out.

A shape emerged from the darkness.

It was enormous, towering above the oak trees themselves. Its fur was thick and matted, soaked in a deep crimson red that looked too dark to be natural. Then I saw its bright orange eyes locked onto us.

Before either of us could react, it grabbed my friend, lifted him like he weighed nothing, and threw him deep into the forest. I didn’t hear his scream until I was already running.

I ran faster than I ever have in my life. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet. All I could hear were heavy footsteps crashing behind me, shaking the earth with every step. I couldn’t see but I knew I needed to lose this creature, so I jumped off the trail into thick bushes to my right.

The footsteps stopped.

I stayed frozen there, shaking, crying, too afraid to breathe. That’s when I remembered the napkin. I pulled it from my pocket and unfolded it with trembling hands.

We had been walking in the wrong direction. we went in the complete opposite trail than what the drawn map instructed, so I slowly, carefully, crept back out and followed the path it showed.

And somehow… it worked.

I broke free of the trees and stumbled into sunlight right in front of our van. I jumped inside and sped straight to the Shadow Falls police department.

When I arrived, I told them everything and showed them the wallet.

They confirmed the owner of the wallet had gone missing three days earlier while hiking in Redwood Forest. They told me they’d send a team out to investigate but they never did.

They tried to convince me my friend was lost. That I imagined the creature. That trauma can make the mind do strange things.

But I hadn’t been drinking. I hadn’t taken drugs. I knew what I saw.

A week later, I went back to the coffee shop.

The old man was there sitting in the same booth.

I sat beside him, desperate for answers. Before I could speak, he said quietly:

“The beast that stalks the forest of red
Eats and feasts on the living and dead.
Stay alert. Stay quiet.
Or you will fall to the Red Giant.”