Stories from Yakutia

The Face Behind the Tree

After finishing the 9th grade (translator's note: russian schools have 10 to 11 grades, so 9th would be something like beginning of highshool) and having passed the state exams, all class went hiking to the countryside. We got a teacher to come with us and picked a place — a small glade about 15 km from the city, with a small river and a small clean pond. We were spending time rather cheerfully by playing volleyball, eating until were were full, and some of the guys were secretly drinking beer they smuggled to the trip. Closer to evening, when it began to get dark, we gathered around a campfire and began to tell each other creepy stories. By the time when we were to go to sleep, we all already were in such state that we would scream nervously from each rustling leaf. Several guys went to an edge of the woods to take a piss some distance away from the rest of us. I began climbing into the tent when they came running back with eyes wide open and raised hell in camp.

According to their account, that's what happened. Approaching an forest edge, they suddenly saw a person hiding behind a tree and carefully looking their way from there. They could not see his face clearly n the twilight, but had assumed that someone from the classchildren decided to play a prank on their expense after all the creepy stories. They began it to shout — "come out, we can see you". The person hiding would retract his face behind the tree and then then poked his head from the other side of the tree. It took them some time to notice that every time the face is would appear higher and higher — soon it was already at the height of four to five meters. And that tree was devoid of any big enough branches to climp onto. The children, naturally, got seriously spooked and ran back to us.

We did not believe them right away — who knows, maybe, they decided to play a prank on us. So all the crowd went to examine that tree. We did not approach the forst edge, but the white spot flashing behind a tree trunk was seen by everybody. And it was rising up and then jumping down, almost all the way to earth. Some girls began to cry out of fear. Teachers ordered us to quickly get in the cars, and we went back to the city in the middle of the night.

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