Our Editors Recount Their Spooky Running Stories

With Halloween coming up, we thought it might be interesting to get the members of our Outside Run team together and ask: “What’s the spookiest thing that’s ever happened to you on a run?” What we pulled together are some of the oddest, scariest stories we’ve ever heard. Cinch your laces tight, because these spooky running stories are so creepy, they might make you jump right out of your shoes. 

Shaw-Shaking in My Running Shoes

My family is originally from Mansfield, Ohio, so I try to make it back to town—with a population of 40,000—annually for its most famous race, the Shawshank Hustle 7K. The race’s start and finish line is in front of The Ohio State Reformatory, a now abandoned reformatory that, in the 1890s, housed some of the most notorious inmates. For that reason, it’s known to be haunted with prisoners who died within its walls. It’s also the site where the movie Shawshank Redemption, with Morgan Freeman and Tim Robin, was filmed. 

After the Hustle, participants are encouraged to walk through the reformatory, which has been kept in its spooky, disheveled state for historical tours. After I ran the 2018 race, I was walking through its rows of ancient-looking jail cells when I decided to poke my head inside one of them. The cell was tiny and terribly rusted, with nothing but a toilet, sink, and bunk bed frame. (All the items, it should be noted, were original to the reformatory.) The space was so crammed, there was barely enough room to spread my arms out. As I was staring around the cell, the door slowly creaked closed behind me —unprompted.  Though it (thankfully) didn’t lock, when I went to grab the cell door and pull it back open, the bed made a sort of groaning sound and shook, like someone was climbing down from the top bunk. I booked it out of there, running faster than I had on the 7k course. A PR, for sure. – Mallory Arnold, Associate Editor, Outside 

An Apologetic Stab in the Back 

A few years ago, I was running in Santa Cruz, California, along a five-mile paved bike path  that follows a coastal tributary inland from the Pacific Ocean. It was an average day, cobalt skies with a touch of salt in the air. People were walking and biking on the path. I had my earbuds in, catching up on the daily news, when I started descending under an overpass bridge and through to the other side. As I did, I noted a curious-looking man standing in the darkness on the side of the path. He had a strange look on his face—not anything sinister, but like he was up to something mischievous. I popped my earbuds out and nodded in acknowledgment as I passed, catching a bit of madness in his eyes. Again, nothing particularly threatening, but something I can only describe as…sorcerous. 

Goosebumps immediately pocked over my arms as I picked up the pace and ran through the dark to the light at the other end. And right as I went to reinsert my earbuds, I felt this searing pain in my upper back, as if someone had stabbed me with a small blade or ninja star. I made an audible gasp and reached to yank whatever it was out of my back, but found nothing. No blade, no blood. I stopped to look behind me and saw that strange wizard man remained in the shadows, mumbling something like an apology and waving his hands in the air with his head drawn low. It was as if he’d used a magic power to throw something sharp at me as I passed, and that he was ashamed for exercising his powers on a stranger running past. It was quite possibly the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to me on a run. – Nicholas Triolo, Senior Editor, Outside Run & Trail Runner 

Ignoring the Omens

The week before my wedding, the universe sent some interesting omens. A bat flew into our apartment and circled the bedroom as I hid under the covers. A kitchen cabinet collapsed in the middle of the night. My dad accidentally took five Ambiens instead of one and, as he spent half a day sleeping and hallucinating, we all thought he’d had a stroke. 

Finally, I went on a run around Harvey’s Lake in Vermont to blow off a little steam and I saw two deer trotting down a dirt road. How adorable, I thought—finally a good omen. Then one of the deer started chasing me. It was a feint that only lasted a few steps but it certainly got me to pick up the pace. I guess these were good omens because, eight years and two kids later, we’re still going strong, but did the omens have to be so creepy? – Alex Tzelnic, contributor, Trail Runner and Outside Run

A Phantom Bear 

I grew up in Bucksport, a small rural town on the coast of Maine. One summer, when I was in high school, my family spent weekends in a camping trailer farther inland. I was putting in summer miles for cross country and, one Saturday evening, I waited until nearly dusk before changing for an easy five-miler. The route, on a narrow two-lane road, first took me alongside a big blueberry field that sloped down to a lake. Earlier that day, my family and I had seen a black bear lumbering down the field, so I kept an eye out for any movement in the scattered boulders. Soon, however, the road entered a tunnel of thick trees that quickly swallowed the remaining light. I could only see enough to stay on the road, but everything in my peripheral vision was murky. It didn’t take long before I saw movement and was certain I could hear crashing in the underbrush. But everytime I stopped and looked around, I was alone. 

Less than a mile into the woods, my pounding heartbeat filled my ears, freeing my imagination to hear even more. Or was it imagination? I stopped and listened, and was sure there was something big just inside the wall of trees. I turned around and headed home at a sprint, hearing a bear’s grunts and heaving breaths, and seeing a charging dark mass with every glance over my shoulder. There was more light when I got back to the field, but not enough to dispel the phantom bear on my tail. I didn’t slow down until I was back at the trailer, where I started to feel silly in the silence around me as my breathing and heart rate came down. 

In the middle of the night, though, I heard a bear again, and felt the trailer rock as the animal pushed against the side. I figured I was imagining it again, but in the morning my mother said, unsolicited, that she had felt the trailer rocking in the night too. You can be sure I ran in daylight on future trips north for the rest of the summer. — Jonathan Beverly, Senior Running Editor, Outside Run & Trail Runner

A Standoff with a Mountain Lion

A few summers ago in Boulder, Colorado, I decided to wait out a late afternoon thunderstorm before venturing out for a long trail run, thinking I’d be able to finish my route just before sunset. After three hours on the trail, the sun was already setting on my way up to the top of Mount Sanitas, but the fading golden light was delicious as I crested the summit and began running down the east ridge. I figured I was the last one on the trail for that day, but I wasn’t concerned about that until my visibility waned and it became dark enough that I had to dig the headlamp out of my pack.

As I continued to run down the technical trail, I spotted several pairs of silvery eyeballs staring at me through the darkness. I was quietly calmed by this, because it meant there were many deer lurking nearby. But then, as I got to the top of the wide, smooth path of the Sanitas Valley Trail, I stopped cold in my tracks when I caught a set of large, widely spaced green eyes reflecting in the light of my headlamp about 25 yards away. 

As I watched the beady eyes looking back at me, I made out the outline of its body and was immediately terrified. I surmised that it wasn’t a dog because it was standing off-trail in the brush and it was as alone as I was. Instantly, I felt an uncanny tension coursing through my body.. I had seen a mountain lion once before on a Boulder trail, but that was in full daylight during an early morning run with a couple of friends.

I knew that if I panicked and began running, it could trigger the lion’s instinct to chase and I’d be doomed. I looked around with the hope of finding a branch or something to defend myself, but the only thing that came into view was a stick only slightly larger than a drinking straw. I turned my head back to the cat and its eyes disappeared momentarily as it moved in cartoon-like quickness along an adjacent ridge, then reappeared, turning its gaze back toward me. 

As I slowly walked backwards down the trail, I felt a jolt of adrenaline and my heart rate elevated as if I was in the middle of a hard interval workout on the track. Instinctually, I began chattering loudly while waving and clapping my hands over my head, hoping to discourage any interest this predator might have in me. I must have sounded like a delusional, dehydrated ultrarunner speaking in tongues after arriving at a middle-of-the-night aid station, but by doing this I was able to widen the gap between me and the feline. 

Within a few moments, I saw the lion turn away from me and bound up the trail in the opposite direction. Still terror-stricken, I turned and ran the final 400 meters down the trailhead at an all-out sprint pace, the awful sensation of being chased still lingering. Although I was finally out of harm’s way, I kept turning around to reassure myself as I ran the final mile on the roads all the way back to my house. – Brian Metzler, Contributing Editor, Outside