Cryptids

A Date Night Under the Meteors, Then Whoops From the Dark: Two Hunters Leave Pennsylvania Game Lands in a Hurry

A Reddit user says that while they and their boyfriend watched the meteor shower from a truck bed on state game lands in north central Pennsylvania, they heard a stick knocking on a tree, then whooping that came closer, then something moving through a crop field. Both are experienced hunters, the poster says, and neither had heard anything like it.

By Dead of Night Dispatch

Location State game lands, north central Pennsylvania (exact location not given)

Illustration: a pickup truck with an air mattress in its bed parked in a dark field, meteor streaks across a starry sky above a wooded hill

PENNSYLVANIA (Oct. 21, 2026): It was supposed to be a date. The plan, the poster writes, was to “go watch the meteor shower”: drive out to the state game lands, inflate an air mattress in the bed of their boyfriend’s pickup and lie back under the sky.

Where it started

The original social media post

  1. u/Horror_Site1742 on Reddit

    The really scary part about this whole thing is that I heard the crops in the field move like something was running through the field by the road.

    Excerpt from a longer first-hand post.

    62 points · 16 comments as of Oct 24, 2026

    From the conversation

    See the full thread on Reddit → (opens in new tab)

Posts shown as originally published; we don’t verify individual comments. Retrieved . “Load the post here” fetches the original from Reddit, which may set cookies.

They left early.

What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

The poster, Horror_Site1742, says they joined r/bigfoot the next morning because “I need to tell someone that won’t think that we are crazy.”

  • The knock. While their boyfriend set up the mattress, “all of the sudden I hear something.. it’s like something is banging a stick on a tree but it sounded pretty far away.” He heard it too. “We didn’t really think anything of it.”
  • The whoops. After a while watching the sky, he started hearing “like a whooping sound,” far away at first. The poster didn’t hear it at first.
  • Closer. After he took a phone call, “talking normally,” things “started to get weird.” Now the poster heard it: “It’s like a whooping sound and it’s really close..” “It kept getting closer and closer.”
  • The field. The layout, they explain, is a parking lot in a field, then about 500 yards to a road, then a wooded hill. “I heard the crops in the field move like something was running through the field by the road.” In a reply, they say it “sounded like it crossed the road into the field.”
  • They left. “We both got freaked out and decided to pack our stuff up and leave.”

What we know

On the record: documents, statements, dates and places. Sources below.

This is one anonymous account, with two witnesses according to the poster and no recording. They don’t name the game lands.

Two details make it more than a spooky night. First, the poster says the two had been there about 20 minutes and “were making a lot of sound too,” which would usually push animals away, not draw them in. Second, “we are both experienced hunters.. we both have been in the woods a lot and we’ve heard a lot of animal calls. We never have heard anything like that before.”

Asked what the whoop sounded like, the poster said: “It sounded like a man whooping.”

Horror_Site1742 also says they checked a Bigfoot sighting map, which showed one earlier sighting “in the same area we were in.” They don’t say which map.

The replies

sxyrth wrote that they’d had a “close proximity territorial vocalization woop” on state game lands this spring, first naming Game Lands 186, then correcting it to 168. Gilmere said they’re “very familiar with the area” and that there’s “a LOT of undeveloped, somewhat rugged terrain.” Another reader, Sendo-03, raised the obvious alternative, that “the only other explanation for what you experienced would be a man whooping,” and asked how likely that was out there at that hour.

What else it could be

A whoop that sounds “like a man” could be a man. State game lands in Pennsylvania are open to the public, and October is a busy month for hunters and anyone out under the meteors. Owls, particularly barred owls, make loud, hooting calls that carry, and coyotes can make surprisingly human sounds. Deer crashing through a field of crops at night can sound like something much bigger. A knock on a tree can be a falling branch or another person.

None of those has to be the answer. The couple’s hunting experience counts for something, and they’re the only ones who heard it.

What’s next

A recording is what would let others weigh in. If the couple goes back to those game lands with a recorder, or if anyone else there that night heard the whoops, we’ll update this story.

Sources

  1. My first bigfoot encounter (opens in new tab) · Reddit, r/bigfoot First-hand account posted the morning of Oct. 22, 2026, about the night before.