89. Very Superstitious
I was spending three days kayaking on the Coorong. I was having a great time and really enjoying the serenity and listening to the native birds and just appreciating nature. On the first day, I heard what I could have sworn was a human not screaming, but screeching, I guess? I didn’t think much of it and kept paddling. I saw what looked like a body close to the shore and found a seal that had just been eviscerated.
Honestly, this thing was spread all over the beach. No footprints of any kind, just a seal in a hundred pieces. After the screeching and the seal, I was a little creeped out but just continued my trip. Nothing of event really happened that night except that I kept hearing splashes from the water in front of me, yet when I checked there was nothing there.
The next day I went out again with the same plan. Just paddle until I got tired and then set up camp and go to bed. Unfortunately for me I got stuck on mud bog and had to spend a solid hour dragging my kayak across this thing to get to the other side of the water where I saw a deeper channel and a bunch of sand dunes. After what feels like maybe 40 minutes of struggling with my kayak and this bog, I saw a figure atop one of the sand dunes.
Logically it was probably a random tourist like me, or maybe a kangaroo. I stared at it for a second before getting back to trying to cross this bog. When I looked back it was gone. Weird. Anyway, I set up camp for my last night, I was a bit creeped out by the seal and the noises and now this figure, so I made sure I had my knife with me.
I set up my tent a bit away from the water in an open area so I could see everything around me. As I was eating dinner, I couldn’t help but feel I was being watched. As it was a total fire ban in the area, I didn’t have a fire so I couldn’t see much. I chalked it up to nerves and went for a short walk to explore the area I was in and wander down to the beach.
Now for some context, the beach nearby is LOUD, you can’t hear much other than crashing waves which makes what happened next especially eerie. I heard that freaking screeching again and looked back to where I came from. Again, a figure was standing in right by the path where I walked to the beach. Screw that I thought, I pulled my knife out and approached where I thought I saw this thing, and there was just a week-old fish that looked like it had been hung on the fence and forgotten.
As I walked back down the path, I heard what sounded like a kangaroo or wallaby just lightly hopping behind me, but when I looked back there was nothing there. Honestly, I just climbed into my tent and prayed to god there was nothing around. It’s kind of anticlimactic but nothing else really happened, I think I heard that screeching once more and then I didn’t hear it again.
Apparently, there are a few indigenous graveyards in the area, I’m not one for superstition but if I’m being honest this experience really spooked me.