The Mushroom Hunter

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Last summer, in July, I rented a double room with my girlfriend in a small, little-known hotel in the south of Moscow for two days. My parents had gone to their dacha, but staying at home didn’t appeal to me, and the hotel offered breakfast and a fairly large room. In short, I wanted to diversify life. The hotel is located at the very edge of a rather large park, and it’s almost always empty. It was built in 1989 and stood half-ruined for a long time, but about five years ago it was renovated. The rooms are decent, but there are always very few people. On an entire floor with dozens of rooms, perhaps only a couple would be occupied.

I chose a room on the north side so it wouldn’t get hot; right in front of the windows, there were trees. Even though it was the second floor, the height was considerable because the first floor had very high ceilings (something like a conference hall), and a ravine started right nearby. Trees grew straight from it. The forest is quite dense, but I know it very well because I live nearby and spent all my childhood wandering there. On the first morning, we decided to take a walk in the forest. We carried two pepper sprays just in case, and I also had an axe. We planned to make a fire — I just wanted to sit by the fire in silence; it had been a long time since I made one, and I wanted to relive childhood and youth. There are many fire spots in the forest because various groups often hang out there. I decided to go to one of the lesser-known and little-frequented spots beyond a stream in the thick undergrowth — I didn’t want to be disturbed by drunken crowds. It was Wednesday, midday, so there shouldn’t have been anyone, but from the very start, it felt a little unsettling to go there just the two of us. But I thought that if anything happened, two pepper sprays and the axe would handle it.

When we reached the stream, I found a strange sight — the path to it through the wide meadow was completely overgrown. Completely. As far back as I could remember, it had always been there. Pushing through the dense, human-height grass to the stream, we continued along a narrow, barely noticeable trail. It had always been inconspicuous and led to a quiet fire spot hidden from view. But the trail quickly disappeared in the thicket, and the fire spot itself was gone. We never found it. This made me uneasy. I couldn’t tell whether my memory was failing me or the place had vanished. We decided to go to another spot, also familiar from childhood but known to others as well. It was on the other side of the forest, but we had no other ideas. While we walked, we didn’t encounter anyone. The forest seemed deserted. That pleased me… until we met a strange person.

He was tall, very thin, wearing tattered pants, a windbreaker, gloves (in +27°C!), and holding a stick. He wasn’t walking toward us but from a perpendicular trail coming out of the ravine. When I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, it seemed he crawled out of the ravine on all fours. Seeing him, we stopped and decided to wait for him to pass. He noticed us, looked at us, and, tapping the ground with his stick and occasionally scratching it (for some unclear reason), continued on. This alarmed us, but since he quickly disappeared, we moved on.

We didn’t find the fire spot immediately and wandered through the thickets. When we finally arrived, my astonishment knew no bounds. I remembered huge thick logs used as benches and a massive trunk section as a table — a huge block next to the benches and fire pit. But those cyclopean logs were gone. I still don’t know who, when, why, and, most importantly, how they were removed. They simply seemed to have vanished. There were no signs of sawing or burning, either. Only a medium-thick log remained, which was uncomfortable to sit on, but we were too lazy to look for another spot and lit a fire there. I spent two to two-and-a-half hours blissfully tending it. My girlfriend and I hugged, took some photos, drank juice, and ate what we brought. We relaxed. But the peace didn’t last long.

Rustling began around us. At first, we ignored it — the forest always rustles: birds, squirrels, sometimes mice. But the rustling turned into crackling — here and there, all around. It became unsettling. No one was visible, no voices, just cracking sounds as small branches snapped. We began packing up. While my girlfriend was putting away the food and camera, I extinguished the fire. We had no water, so I dug around it a little with a stick and beat the embers to prevent a forest fire. All the while, we kept looking around. When the fire seemed out, we began leaving. However, the trail we had come by never appeared. I couldn’t describe how surprised — and soon frightened — I was. The crackling continued in the distance, but I realized something was wrong. I’ve known this forest since childhood, and we needed to cover about 25–30 meters to reach the trail… Instead, we came upon a triangular deep pit with vertical walls, dug right among the trees. It was filled with dirty, murky green-gray water, with leaves and some dust floating. I wasn’t too surprised, because in the ’90s, local Tolkien enthusiasts built many things in the forest, then abandoned them, and everything still rots there. What was unsettling was that near the pit in the mud were fresh footprints leading in the direction we came from, along with some chaotic furrows, mostly arc-shaped. I stared at it for a minute, then took another look at the pit and decided we needed to leave quickly.

We dashed in a direction that felt right to me and soon reached a trail, though not the one we expected. I didn’t understand how we ended up there. Nevertheless, I recognized the spot and we successfully left the forest, returning to the hotel. Fear faded, and we had a great evening. As it got dark, my girlfriend, looking out the windows, said she felt scared spending the night at the edge of the forest in an almost empty hotel. I suddenly realized I felt scared too. We drew all the curtains and closed the balcony door (our room had a balcony). It felt somewhat safer. We soon went to sleep.

At about 4 a.m., I suddenly woke and saw a strange sight: the TV was on, but the channel was showing nothing, only flickering black-and-white dots. The screen ghostly illuminated the room. The balcony door was open, with the curtain drawn. A figure could be seen on the balcony. I couldn’t tell whose figure it was, but assumed my girlfriend had woken up and gone out. I called her name — the figure silently moved but didn’t respond. I called again, and then water could be heard from the bathroom, the light hit the opened bathroom door, and the girlfriend emerged, who had woken and gone to the toilet. Seeing her, I panicked and looked back at the balcony — behind the sheer curtain, it was empty. The balcony was closed, curtains drawn. But it became even scarier since we didn’t know what had happened there…

We spent the rest of the night huddled together. In the morning, we complained to the security guards that someone had entered our room. They looked at us as if we were crazy — probably assuming we were drunk. Inspecting the balcony revealed something that made us decide not to stay for a second night. On the wall between the balcony and the window were deep scratches, carved into the concrete and leading down from our floor. I was sure they hadn’t been there the night before because I had been standing on the balcony and looking around. We went to my place (as I said, I live nearby) and decided to stay there until evening, and then spend the night at my girlfriend’s dorm, but at the last moment she found out there was no space. Fortunately, I persuaded my parents not to come that evening, and we stayed at my place. We lay down in the big room. Something felt off.

We didn’t fall asleep. At around 2 a.m., I distinctly heard footsteps and the tapping of a stick on the asphalt under the window (I live on the fourth floor). I slowly looked out — nothing. I stayed there for about twenty minutes. Silence. Just in case, I went to close the windows. When I went to close the kitchen window, I froze in fear. The TV was on someone’s doing, set to a channel without a program. The window was wider open than I had left it. I rushed and closed it in horror. It was terrifying. We drew all the curtains, grabbed the axe, took some knives, and sat with the lights on in the big room, locking the door. These measures were ridiculous and useless, but we didn’t know what to do. It seemed they would protect us. I tried calling my parents on my mobile — no signal. My girlfriend also had no signal. There was no landline at my parents’ dacha.

We sat like this for an hour. A thunderstorm began outside — we heard the wind, raindrops, and rushing water… It felt calmer, as if the rain washed away our fear. We turned on the TV, started watching a movie, and came back to our senses. The storm raged on. Suddenly, the TV went to static again — black-and-white flicker, then slowly dissolved into dots. The feeling of horror that gripped us was indescribable. The window panes began to tremble and rattle. Then we heard IT.

It’s hard to describe the terror we experienced — probably how hunted animals feel. Something was pounding. Right on the glass. Persistently. The glass didn’t break but continued to shake and rattle. The curtains were drawn, and it was especially scary because we couldn’t see what was behind them. Finally, in utter shock, I took the axe, crawled toward the rattling window, and yanked a curtain from the bottom, hoping to reveal branches hitting the glass in the wind. I was lying under the windowsill and couldn’t see what I uncovered. But my girlfriend, sitting in the middle of the room, saw it. I saw her face in that moment — the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Her face twisted in sheer horror, and she let out an unbearably loud scream. At the same instant, I heard some scraping, another strike — the last — on the glass, and everything became quiet. A few seconds later, the TV image returned. I got up, close to hysteria, and glanced out — a quiet summer night. The glass was dry, nothing but clear, starry sky. That night, there was no rain. Only a few small scratches remained on the glass. I tried in vain to get the frozen girlfriend to tell me what she saw. She only cried and turned away from the window.

I stayed with her until morning, then took her to the dorm. Her friends noticed something was wrong. That evening, she was already in the clinic, and for some reason, I wasn’t allowed to visit her for two weeks. I wandered around under my apartment windows that evening in confusion, searching for scratches on the wall, but found none. However, a large birch growing right below my window, reaching it, was strangely stripped in places. Neighbors later said a garbage truck had done it, but I had my suspicions.

Two weeks later, my girlfriend said she was moving to another city. She didn’t tell me anything else and clarified nothing. I think something irreversible happened to her. The strangest thing she never realized. Near my home, there’s a small grove, not far from that hotel and forest. There, I found arc-shaped scratches on the ground, which made me recall the strange man we encountered and the mysterious pit.

About a month and a half after those two days of terror, I read a local newspaper report that made me shudder. Four people had disappeared from that forest park in the previous six months (all went for walks on weekdays in the morning or daytime), never found, but one person’s clothing was discovered torn near the triangular pit with water. When the pit was investigated, two enormous logs with hollowed chambers were raised. Inside were found belongings of the other three people — clothes, bags, some tools, and clumps of hair. Nearby, a “strangely, obviously inappropriately dressed man, claiming to be a mushroom hunter” was detained. At that time, authorities were looking for the Bitsevsky maniac, so he was suspected and interrogated. His fingerprints were found on clothing by the pit, but he either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain anything. Investigation revealed he suffered from clinical lycanthropy. Where the missing people’s bodies were, what happened to them, and how this man was involved was never discovered. Apparently, he was sent for compulsory treatment.

I know it sounds insane, but I have only one explanation. This… being noticed us and wanted to do something to us… Then it followed us at night to the hotel after we left it in the forest (I don’t know why we managed to escape, while the other four didn’t). Then it tracked us to my apartment and again tried to get in at night. Its appearance is linked to interference with electronics. What this man believes — that he can transform into an animal — is known only to one girl, who hasn’t said and won’t say anything. During the day, he wandered in his human form near my house. Why we heard a thunderstorm, I can’t explain. I can’t see TV interference either, and I also want to move to another city. I’m scared to live here.

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