The last recording from an Oregon forest (translated Korean creepypasta)

Alex settled into a silence more complete than a probe landing on Mars. An old log cabin deep inside Mount Hood National Forest, Oregon. It was going to be his home and his studio for the next six months.

He was a wildlife photographer. This place was his shot at getting rare cougars and grizzlies on film. Dozens of kilometers from the nearest civilization. No phone. No internet. The only way he could reach the outside world was his weekly trip down the mountain for groceries.

First two weeks were peaceful. Explored the forest during the day, sorted through his photos by the fireplace at night. The stillness was honestly perfect for focusing.

Then week three hit.

It started with a feeling he couldn't explain. Sounds bleeding into his half-sleep. At first he brushed it off. Wind against rotten branches. Small nocturnal animals. Whatever.

But the sound got clearer. And weirder. Like someone chewing wet leaves. Or a person being strangled, gasping for breath. Right under his window.

He grabbed his M16 and cracked the door open. Pitch black. Nothing there. The forest was silent again.

When it kept happening he tried to talk himself down. You're just isolated. You're paranoid. He thought about all those "true scary stories from remote places" he used to read online but told himself nope, just tired. Deep breath. Go to sleep.

A few days later he went out to check the motion cameras he'd set up around the forest.

Camera one: deer. Camera two: fox. Normal stuff.

Camera three. His face went blank. The memory card was empty. Like someone wiped it on purpose.

Camera four was worse. He'd aimed it at a valley. Somehow the lens was now turned around, pointing at the huge tree right in front of it. Like someone had been messing with it and accidentally knocked it sideways.

Something felt off. He checked the last camera and stopped breathing.

The footage was from the middle of the night. Something moved slowly into frame in total darkness. Out of focus, blurry, but it was NOT a four-legged animal. It had abnormally long thin limbs. Human-ish. Shaped like a person but wrong.

It walked right up to the lens. Stopped. And then the screen cut to static.

His heart dropped through the floor. This wasn't paranoia. There was actually something else in this forest with him. It crashed down on him all at once. He was literally the main character of a horror story now.

After that, every night he locked the door and hung thick blankets over the windows. Gun within reach at all times. Sleeping in these shallow half-naps where you don't know if you're actually out. And every single night, he could feel something circling the cabin.

One morning he opened the door and nearly lost it.

Laid out neatly on his porch: bird feathers, small animal bones, strangely shaped stones. Arranged. Like some kind of primitive ritual.

This was a warning. Obviously.

He decided right then. Leaving. Now. Packed his gear, got in the car, turned the key.

All four tires shredded. Something sharp had sliced through every one of them.

No signal. Nearest town was a full day's walk. He wasn't about to try hiking out through that forest at nightfall. He knew in his gut. There was no escape from this.

That night, a storm hit. Rain hammering down like it wanted to swallow the cabin whole. Thunder shaking everything. And through all that noise, Alex heard something scratching at the door.

Not claws. Fingernails. Dragging down the wood. That specific horrible sound.

He held his breath, rifle pointed at the door. The scratching went on forever. Then stopped.

And then he heard it.

"Alex? Open the door. It's me. Dad."

His dead father's voice. EXACTLY his voice. So vivid that every drop of blood in Alex's body went cold. This wasn't some auditory hallucination. A few days ago he'd been out in the forest, muttering to himself about memories of his dad.

It had been listening.

Then the voice changed. Now it was his mother. "Honey? Are you in there? Open up for me, sweetie." Word for word from a satellite call he'd had with her a week ago.

This thing was mimicking. It had copied everything. His words, the sounds he'd heard. Perfectly. And it was using them as bait.

He was living a literal campfire horror story.

He clapped his hands over his ears and curled up in the corner. Outside, the sounds kept coming. His own laugh. His cough. Even birdsong he had personally recorded on his own equipment. It felt like every trace of him had been stolen.

He didn't know how much time passed. Eventually the noise stopped. Faint dawn light seeped through the window cracks. He'd been frozen in terror all night, eyes wide open. He waited until the sun was high in the sky before creeping toward the door.

Outside: nothing but storm damage.

Except.

Right in front of the door. Exactly on the spot where his tires had been slashed to keep him from leaving. His last motion camera. The one he'd lost in the forest. Sitting there. Lens pointed directly at the front door.

Like he was in a trance, Alex picked it up and went back inside. Hands shaking, he slid the memory card into his laptop.

One file. Created 5 minutes ago.

He swallowed hard and clicked.

The screen lit up. The familiar inside of his cabin. The exact corner where he'd been huddled in terror last night.

The camera had been inside. Filming him. From somewhere behind his back.