The Haunted Pocomoke Forest: The Faces in the Trees

Pocomoke Forest at night — where headlights don’t always reveal what’s watching.

You don’t expect a forest to feel crowded.

Not at night.

Especially not one as wide and dark as Pocomoke.

The road narrows as you enter. The sky disappears behind branches that knit together overhead. Headlights stretch forward, swallowed quickly by bark and shadow. The air changes. It grows heavier. Sound dulls.

Drivers say that’s when it starts.

Not with a scream.

Not with movement.

With the sense that something is standing just beyond the reach of your beams.

Watching.

The story most often told begins with a school bus.

A late route.
A stretch of road cutting through the trees.
No houses close enough to matter.

The driver slows because something looks wrong along the tree line.

Not animals.

Not branches.

Faces.

Too pale.
Too still.
Too many.

He stops the bus.

And that’s where the versions begin to split.

Some say he stepped out to investigate.

Some say he never left the driver’s seat.

Some say the bus was found idling the next morning, door open, interior lights flickering against empty seats.

But nearly every telling agrees on one detail:

He was never the same again.

Or he was never found at all.

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Where Pocomoke Forest Is — and Why It Feels Different

Pocomoke State Forest stretches across Maryland’s Eastern Shore, near the town of Snow Hill. It’s one of the most densely wooded areas in the state — cypress swamps, thick undergrowth, and stretches of road where headlights barely push back the dark.

Locals have called it “The Scary Woods” for generations.

By day, it’s quiet and green. Trails wind through the trees. Campers pitch tents near the river. The forest feels deep but manageable.

At night, that depth changes.

The canopy blocks moonlight. Sound travels oddly — sometimes too far, sometimes not at all. The ground holds moisture. The air feels close.

And the trees stand tight together.

Close enough that when your headlights sweep across them, shapes form where nothing should be.

That’s the environment the legend lives in.

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The Bus Driver Legend

The bus driver story doesn’t come with a date carved in stone.

It doesn’t come with a newspaper clipping.

It comes with repetition.

Older residents recall hearing it when they were children. Teenagers still dare each other to drive that stretch after midnight.

The version most often told goes like this:

A school bus was making its way along a rural route near the forest’s edge. It was late — either after dropping off students or heading back to town. The road was empty.

As the bus entered the thickest part of the trees, the driver noticed something between the trunks.

Faces.

Pale against bark.
Flat.
Expressionless.

Not moving.

Just… there.

He slowed.

The faces did not disappear.

They multiplied.

Between one tree and the next.
Clustered.
Watching.

Some versions say he stepped off the bus to confront whoever was trespassing. Others claim he simply stared too long — that something in the woods stared back.

The next morning, the bus was found abandoned.

Engine cold.
Door ajar.

In certain retellings, a skeleton was discovered not far from the road — bleached and scattered near the tree line, as if whatever happened did not require speed.

In other versions, no remains were found at all.

Just absence.

The details shift.

The faces do not.

Some versions of the legend grow darker the longer it’s told.

They say the bus wasn’t empty when it was found.

They say the seats were undisturbed, but something felt wrong inside — as if the air had been held too long. As if the vehicle had been closed around something that had already left.

In a quieter retelling, the driver wasn’t killed.

He returned.

He drove the bus back into town sometime before dawn.

But he wasn’t speaking.

Not to police.
Not to coworkers.
Not even to family.

He kept repeating the same sentence:

“They were too close.”

No one could get him to explain what “they” were.

He never drove that route again.

That version ends without violence.

Which makes it worse.

Because disappearance can be dismissed.

Madness lingers.

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The Faces in the Trees

This is the part of the legend that unsettles people the most.

Because it’s easy to imagine.

Anyone who has driven through a forest at night knows how headlights behave. They create tunnels. They exaggerate contrast. They turn bark into patterns that resemble movement.

But the reports connected to Pocomoke don’t describe shadows.

They describe presence.

Drivers claim they’ve seen something standing between the trees — not stepping forward, not retreating, just positioned.

A pale oval.
A suggestion of eyes.
No features.

Others describe multiple shapes — too low to be adult, too tall to be children, spaced evenly as if arranged.

The most disturbing accounts don’t include motion at all.

They include stillness.

As if whatever stands in those trees does not need to chase.

It only needs to observe.

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Reported Encounters Along the Road

Pocomoke Forest doesn’t advertise itself as haunted. There are no official signs warning visitors about legends. But online threads and local storytelling keep the narrative alive.

The encounters are rarely dramatic.

They are subtle.

A driver reports that while traveling through the forest, her radio shifted to static for several seconds before returning to normal once she exited the tree line.

Another claims his headlights flickered briefly — not fully dying, just dimming — as he passed a particular stretch of road where the trees grow especially close together.

Hunters have mentioned hearing what sounds like whispering carried through the brush — not wind, not animals, but layered sound that fades when they stop walking.

Campers have described the sensation of being watched from beyond the firelight. Not fear at first. Just awareness.

A few stories mention children.

Kids who refuse to look out the car window.
Kids who insist they saw “people without faces” standing in the woods.

Parents often dismiss it.

Until they drive that stretch themselves.

And find they don’t want to look too closely either.

A handful of stories mention timing anomalies.

Drivers glance at the clock before entering the forest — then check again upon exiting and find more minutes have passed than expected for the distance traveled.

No missing hours.

No dramatic time loss.

Just enough to feel off.

Others describe animals behaving strangely.

Deer standing motionless at the edge of the trees long after a car passes.
Birds going silent all at once.
Dogs refusing to face the forest side of a campsite.

One camper wrote that during a late-night bathroom walk, he heard footsteps matching his pace just beyond the tree line.

Not rushing.

Not stalking.

Matching.

When he stopped, they stopped.

When he walked again, they resumed.

He never saw anything.

That may be the detail that keeps the legend alive.

The lack of confirmation.

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Why Forest Legends Persist

Forests are ideal environments for stories like this.

They distort light.
They distort sound.
They limit visibility.

Your brain fills in gaps.

It turns irregular shapes into figures.
It assigns intention to randomness.

Psychologists call it pattern recognition.

But pattern recognition doesn’t explain repetition.

When the same type of image appears across decades of retellings — pale faces, clustered figures, silent observers — the legend takes on structure.

Pocomoke’s story doesn’t revolve around a named ghost or a specific historical crime.

It revolves around atmosphere.

A place that feels occupied even when it’s empty.

And that kind of fear is harder to dismiss.

Forests across North America carry similar stories — from the Stick Indians of the Pacific Northwest to the Wood Devils of Coos County — where the fear centers not on attack, but on being observed.

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The Forest Doesn’t Move — But It Changes

People who spend enough time in wooded areas know how quickly orientation can slip.

Landmarks look identical.
Paths loop.
Light shifts.

In Pocomoke, the trees grow so tightly in certain sections that depth becomes difficult to judge. Headlights flatten everything into layers. What feels far away might only be yards from your bumper.

Drivers describe the sensation that the forest leans inward at night.

Not physically.

But perceptually.

The road feels narrower.
The darkness feels thicker.
The gaps between trees feel filled.

And once you’ve heard the story about faces in the woods, your brain begins scanning for them automatically.

Every knot in the bark becomes an eye.
Every pale branch becomes a cheekbone.

But here’s what unsettles people:

Sometimes they see something that doesn’t dissolve when they blink.

Sometimes the shape remains.

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The Skeleton Detail

In some tellings of the bus driver legend, searchers found remains near the forest’s edge.

Not intact.
Not arranged.
Just there.

The image is stark enough that it lingers, even when no one can provide a source.

No official record confirms a skeletal discovery tied to a bus disappearance in Pocomoke.

That doesn’t weaken the story.

It strengthens it.

Because legends that survive without documentation rely entirely on retelling.

And this one continues.

Not because of proof.

Because of discomfort.

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When the Stories Overlap

The bus driver is the anchor.

But the forest has collected other stories.

Campers who wander off trail and lose track of time.
Hikers who insist the trees “shifted” behind them.
Drivers who feel compelled to speed up without knowing why.

Some versions of the legend expand the faces into something older — spirits, lost souls, guardians of the swamp.

Others strip it down entirely.

No supernatural explanation.

Just a forest that does not like to be stared into.

The lack of a defined monster is part of what makes the legend effective.

You can’t research it.
You can’t categorize it.

You can only drive through and decide whether what you saw was bark.

Or something else.

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Similar Legends: Forests That Watch Back

The Pine Barrens — New Jersey

The Pine Barrens are famously tied to the Jersey Devil, but beyond the winged creature, locals speak of shapes between trees and the feeling of being followed through the undergrowth. Like Pocomoke, the forest itself carries the tension — wide, open stretches broken by sudden density.

Hoia Baciu Forest — Romania

Often called the “Bermuda Triangle of Transylvania,” Hoia Baciu is known for strange lights, shadow figures, and overwhelming sensations of dread. Visitors describe feeling observed by something just beyond the tree line — a similarity that echoes in Pocomoke’s face-in-the-woods reports.

The Black Forest Sightings — Various U.S. Regions

Across multiple states, wooded areas have produced reports of pale, featureless figures glimpsed at night. No unified legend. No official explanation. Just repeated discomfort tied to isolation and trees.

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If You Go

Pocomoke State Forest remains open.

Campgrounds operate.
Trails are maintained.
The road still cuts cleanly through the trees.

There are no warnings about faces.
No plaques about a vanished bus driver.

If you drive through Pocomoke at night, nothing dramatic is likely to happen.

No creatures will leap into your headlights.
No skeletal remains will appear at your feet.

But the road through the forest is long enough for doubt to settle in.

Long enough for your headlights to sweep across the trunks again and again.

Long enough for you to wonder how many shapes are natural.

And how many are not.

Because once a place collects a story, it changes.

Not physically.

Psychologically.

You don’t just see trees anymore.

You see gaps.

You see patterns.

You see the possibility of faces.

And whether those faces ever stood there or not becomes irrelevant.

The next time you drive through that stretch of Maryland forest, you will look.

And that act alone keeps the legend alive.

Some forests feel empty.

Pocomoke feels populated.

Even when no one is there.

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Karen Cody writes immersive folklore and paranormal fiction, exploring the cultural roots and enduring psychology behind legends from around the world. Through Urban Legends, Mystery & Myth, she examines the stories that persist — and why we continue to tell them.