Published In The Great North Arrow, October 15, 2025: Terror In The Woods

Terror In The Woods

- jim Young

“After watching horror movies, I realized that I’m afraid of the monsters because I don’t know what they are capable of and I’m afraid of people because I DO know what they are capable of.” - jim Young

With Halloween approaching I started thinking about some real life scary events from my past. Do dreams count? Because this is where one of the scariest events of my life started. It should count when you consider that the original “Frankenstein” story was inspired following a nightmare of author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. “The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” came to Robert Louis Stevenson in a dream as did the plot for “Misery” by Stephen King.

Anyway, my story doesn’t actually begin in a dream. But the setting for my soon to come nightmares started in a wood lot near Coldwater, Ontario. In the early 1980s I was temporarily out of work. I decided to join my brother-in-law Jim who was cutting firewood for a living at the time. Coincidentally Jim’s partner was also named Jim and so we three Jims set out every day with sharpened and oiled chainsaws to venture into the bush to down trees, cut them into 16” lengths and chop them, for firewood.

One of my jobs was to pile the fire wood after it had been cut and split into the back of an old truck to prepare it for delivery. The truck was falling apart with rust on the body and rotting wood on the floor of the cargo bed leaving gaping holes that one had to be careful not to step in. The scariest part of my job was trying to keep my feet from going through one of those holes, while dodging the firewood that Jim and Jim chucked into the truck in my general direction. The smirks on their faces and occasional outright laughing let me know that many of the near misses weren’t all by accident.

It wasn’t until after a couple of weeks into the job that the nightmares began. In a dream I had one evening, I was alone in the bush where we were cutting wood when I happened to come across Leatherface, the villain from the 1974 movie, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. 

To this day, I don’t know what caused Leatherface to appear in my sleep. The movie had been released about 10 years prior to this time and even with the advent of VHS video recorders, it was still on my bucket list of movies to see someday. But other than the picture I had seen of Leatherface on movie posters, I knew very little about the movie or its plot. We hadn’t been discussing it during my time in the wood lot so there was no reason for it to even be on my mind.

But here I was face to face with Leatherface in my nightmare. With the terrifying buzzing of his chainsaw cutting through the quiet in the forest, Leatherface began chasing me. I knew enough of the movie to not stick around as I turned to run. The wood lot we were working in was a typical hardwood bush. While dodging trees, there was at least no thick underbrush to slow me down or trip me up. But Leatherface was no slow ambling zombie and I could feel him gaining on me. It was much too far to the road where the truck was parked and I knew I wouldn’t be able to outrun him. With no place to go, there was only one option.

I quickly began climbing a tree to escape Leatherface’s attack. Give me a break! It was a dream and it was the only option I had. As you might expect, Leatherface took his mighty chainsaw and proceeded to cut the tree down, bringing me back to the ground.

Fortunately that’s when I woke up in a cold sweat. 

I related that story to Jim and Jim as we drove together to the wood lot that day. They were laughing even more than they did while they made me dance while tossing wood at me in the old delivery truck.

I rarely have recurring dreams and even when I do they are spaced apart over time. But that very evening, shortly after I had fallen asleep, Leatherface returned. Again I was alone in the forest as he began chasing me with his chainsaw. I remember thinking to myself in the dream, “Well I’m not going to make THAT mistake again!” Of course I was referring to the climbing-of-the-tree fiasco from the night before. 

However, I wasn’t certain just what alternatives were available to me, if any. After running a short distance with Leatherface in hot pursuit once more, and gaining on me, I spotted the old tractor we had on site. The old tractor was used from time to time to haul a tree to a better location for cutting, but I had never personally operated it. Confident I could figure it out, yet unsure that even the turtle-like speed of the tractor could outrun Leatherface, I hopped on and turned the key. As you might expect would happen in any respectable horror movie, the tractor motor wouldn’t turn over. There was nothing left for me to do but climb a tree to try to escape.

And as you also might expect, Leatherface once more set about to cut the tree down with me in it. Again, I awoke before facing the sadistic fury of this monster.

Thankfully it was now the weekend. My wife and I were going to the family cottage in the Muskokas as was my brother-in-law Jim and my sister Lennie, where we would spend the weekend with my parents and other family members. Our family cottage had originally been built as a one room cabin. Over the years bedrooms were added to one side of the cottage. An extension that ran the full width of the cottage had been built on the other end. It was divided into two rooms, a woodshed on the back which led to the outhouse and a small sitting room at the front. These two rooms were separated by just a wall of thin paneling. With no insulation it kept neither the cold nor any sound out.

As we had a large family, my wife’s and my designated bedroom was a pull out couch in this sitting room. The entrance from the main room of the cottage was an open doorway that allowed the light from the main room to spill in, providing us with only a very modest amount of privacy. Some nights we would lay in bed and continue to be part of the conversation in the next room until we drifted off to sleep.

As the night wore on, my wife and I excused ourselves to retire to our pull out couch leaving Jim, my sister and our parents to play cards late into the evening.

After a hard week of cutting wood, it was not long before I fell into a deep sleep, this time undisturbed by the appearance of Leatherface. But then, in the dark and without warning came the roar of a chainsaw only a few feet from head.

I immediately sat straight up in bed. My wife later told me my eyes were as wide as saucers as she grabbed me, trying to reassure me that everything was okay. “It’s just Jim. It’s just Jim,” she repeated until I had fully awoken and was able to assess what was happening.

During a break in the card game, Jim made a trip to the outhouse. But on his way out through the woodshed he spied a chainsaw on top of the woodpile and knowing the proximity of my head on the other side of the thin wall, thought it might be funny to fire it up at about 1:00 am in the morning.

It was funny of course and I should have realized that by the laughter that erupted from the next room. It was funny to everyone but me, but eventually I found it funny too.

Okay - in retrospect my whole horror story now seems to be more humorous than it was scary, but I assure you that for those few moments as I sat upright in my bed, my heart was beating faster and harder than even Keith Moon’s drumsticks as he relentlessly punished his drum kit.

Today I think of Jim as my therapist and his abrupt awakening of me that night with the chainsaw as shock therapy. The nightmares immediately ceased and I have never encountered Leatherface in my sleep since that night. 

However Hallowe’en is fast approaching and Netflix is offering a whole new array of grotesque monstrosities that might decide to seek me out in my nocturnal adventures. I wonder what types of frightening shock therapy might be required to rid me of visitations from antagonists like Pennywise or Chucky? Please just don’t let it be the “Jigsaw Killer” from the “Saw” franchise.

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