Spirits of the Forest

I remembered back when I was a senior in high school, there was a time when some of us were sent for a team building activity at a camp site near the foot of a mountain.

We arrived at the camp site almost sunset and we were told that our first activity was called "Owl", scheduled for 8PM. None of us knew what it was and why was there an activity planned that late but we were excited and anxious nonetheless.

But first, we gathered in the camp's dining hall to have our dinner. We ate, chatted and laughed. At about 8PM, one of our teachers went to the front of the dining hall and explained that for our "Owl" activity, we had to first memorize a message that would be passed from one student to another and the last student must have the correct message.

We didn't understand what was the purpose of this but we were giggling and laughing when after several tries, the last student still had the message wrong. We were so engrossed in our giggles and laughters when suddenly, our teacher shouted "Do you think this is a joke?!", looking rather annoyed.

The bustling room suddenly turned silent. Everyone in the room was stunned. We thought it was a joke, guess not. We stopped laughing and made sure we passed the message correctly. We tried another few rounds and we got annoyed ourselves when the last person couldn't get the message correct. After more than ten tries, we finally did it.

When our teacher was satisfied with our "achievement", she ushered us out of the dining hall into the camp gates, together with some men who were the camp site's officers. Curious, we just followed along and gathered under the moonlight. The night was cool and the moon was surprisingly bright.

We were asked to find a partner, a senior with a junior and queue in line. Then, our teacher led us into the forest. She placed each pair of us at a spot, a few hundred meters away from one another. As we took our spots, wondering what was going on, we were reminded to remember the secret message that was passed earlier. We nodded and sat at our spots as the teacher continued to lead the rest to their spots.

As I sat there with my junior, we chatted for a bit, whispered mostly as the night was silent and it didn't feel right to talk. Luckily the moonlight was bright, we didn't feel that afraid. We didn't know how long we were suppose to sit there but we told ourselves to just brave it up.

We sat there, almost falling asleep when we heard leaves rustling behind us. We froze. My junior looked at me with a very worried face and started shaking. I, on the other hand, was shaking inside but I had to keep a straight face to console her because it was pointless if we were both scared. We held hands, closed our eyes and prayed the way we knew how.

After some very long minutes, the sound stopped. We felt relieved and prayed the teacher would come and get us soon. It felt like forever when we saw a ray of light, our teacher's torch, we prayed. True enough, we saw our teacher and we jumped to follow her behind. The long night finally ended and none of us spoke of what we heard.

The next morning, after breakfast, our teacher brought us to a place that overlooked the forest that she brought us to. She explained the purpose of the "Owl" was to test our endurance and courage. Then, she went on to explain that the message passing from the night before was to make sure that we did not follow the spirits of the forest.

Suddenly, we felt goosebumps. We thought of the sounds and some of us remembered that we did not cross check the secret message before we followed the teacher, including myself. What if the teacher we followed was not our teacher? A creepy thought as we looked to the mysterious forest.

Image by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash