1906June

BEWARE OF STRANGE CABINS IN THE WOODS – June 2019

With Meth Labs and Other Nefarious Activities Encroaching Public and Even Private Lands, It is Wise to Practice Greater Caution While Hunting and Fishing in Remote Areas

I COULD ALMOST HEAR “Ki Ki Ki Ma Ma Ma” echoing in the forest.

Excitement at the opportunity to be in the woods alone, early in the morning in a remote tract had now turned to…well…fright.

Just ahead of me on a lonely creek bottom was a structure cobbled together with boards, pipes and tarps. It looked eerily familiar to the home of slasher Jason Voorhees on Friday the 13th Pt. 2.

I was not just in the woods but the super deep woods about as far from people as you can get in the eastern third of Texas.

Had I stumbled upon the living quarters of some killer hidden out here? There are instances of people in this region living off the land and never coming out in the region so maybe it was just a hermit.

The more likely answer is this was someone’s meth lab-something I have always hoped I would never find.

I did not stick around to investigate.

A couple of days later Hurricane Harvey’s epic rains hit Southeast Texas and the nearest homes to the location had 6-8 feet of water in them. This spot would’ve been deeper than that so if Jason did live in there, he had to make a new home.

I haven’t returned to ask him how it turned out.

Chad Meadows encountered something similar when he was a young teen.

“One day me and my cousin got bored so,we grabbed the machete and our bb guns and went off  exploring,” he said.

“This was on a levee in Deweyville, TX. We went down by the river and came across some trees that were clearly cut down with an axe and formed into a 10×10 half walled fort. We found the jackpot or so we thought.”

“During our firefight with the enemy, we saw another fort a couple hundred feet away, but covered in a dingy white canvas tarp. We needed a fallback position so we checked out this new, smaller fort. We thought we had stumbled on a hunter’s camp. The second place had a bunch of barrels and pots and copper tubing. We didn’t know what it was but it was hidden so we decided to get out of there,” Meadows said.

So, off the duo went.

When they got a few feet away a “wildman” with what he described as a ZZ Top beard came running and yelling and waving a shotgun.

“We took off. I remember him firing the gun and I could hear the pellets peppering the trees around us. We weren’t hit but we were scared. We didn’t tell our parents because my uncle would have gone after the man. A few days later, their dog came up missing, only to be found dead just in the woods near where we set off on our adventure,” Meadow said.

The moral of the story? If you find rickety structures in the woods get out. Quickly.

Chance are its someone hiding out or hiding something in the remoteness of the forest.

However my imagination and the amount of times I viewed the second Friday the 13th as a kid won’t rule out a slasher with a white sack over his head.

Plus there is the time I was driving down a remote road not too far from this location and saw a guy in overalls rocking on a porch with a sack over his head. When I came back through a couple of hours later he was still there.

I hope I never encounter him in the woods.

I know Jason is a fictional character but this guys outfit was too close of a match to the iconic movie slasher for my comfort and this was in July, not on Halloween.

Creepy, huh?

—story by CHESTER MOORE

 

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Heather Bryan

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Heather Bryan

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