Ravens are incredible birds. They are very smart, crafty and mysterious. They can 'throw' their voice in a forest so you cannot tell from which direction it is sent. They can mimic almost any other birds call if they choose to. I have had them land next to me and look me in the eye and begin talking in soft clucking, almost purring sounds. If I spoke back it would keep the 'conversation' going.
One time I landed my little boat on a small island in the wilds of Canada I had never been on. I pulled my boat up the beach above the tide-line and wondered which part of the island to explore first. Next thing I knew I felt drawn into the dense forest and directly came to a small, old and crumbling picket fence. It was an open grave—evidenced by bones poking up here and there outlining a human body. It was obvious that the grave held two people, one older and covered parallel to the bones. It appeared to me that it was a couple and that one had buried the other before eventually laying down to die next to their mate.
All the while I felt as if I was being watched and would look around slowly to see if I could see or sense this presence without luck. I began wandering further into the forest climbing over & under rotting logs and mated humus and moss, between salal bushes and ferns. Still I had the distinct feeling of eyes on me. I then heard that unique raucous squawk of a raven. But no matter how I tried I could not seem to identify the exact direction. I walked on, and out of the corner of my eye I spotted a flash of dark wings in the thick tree crowns above me. There he was, a large raven looking down at me.
This raven followed me every step I made as I clamored awkwardly through his domain. At on point I became turned around in the dark woods and stopped. The raven moved ahead and I began to follow him. He would wait until I caught up before moving further I felt as if he was taking me somewhere. At one point I had been so focused on the direction the raven was taking me that I almost did not take in my immediate surroundings, but as I did I realized I was in some kind of clearing on the base of a rock outcropping. Upon closer inspection I saw more bones but this time they were animal, probably deer. I knew in an instant I was standing in a mountain lions den, or cougar as called along the coast. I decided it was time to find the beach and my boat. Raven went with me until the edge of the forest, giving me a last echoing guteral shriek of a call as I left the dense and stepped in open light.
PS-Later I built a log cabin directly across an inlet from this island. One day my wife calls to me and says, “Come see this”. She points across the channel to the island of the Raven. She says, “Look, can you see the wispy figures walking on the beach?”. And indeed there were misty shapes like figures moving close along the high-tide line at forests edge. She said she had seen this a few times when alone and decided these were ghosts. I had never told her about my exploration with the raven there. Now my wife wanted to go for a picnic there with our baby son. I was actually not too keen to go to this island again but one sunny day we packed up some food and the kid and boated over to the small gravel beach I had years before landed on. While I was unpacking the boat my wife suddenly was no longer there. I stuck our baby into his backpack and carried him into the forest were I knew my wife had been drawn to go—the gravesite. There she was standing over it saying how strange of a grave this was bones & all. I had not told her about it before.
We went back out onto the beach and carried our blanket and food box & baby toward the other end of the island where we had seen a grass patch. As we walked along the beach we both noticed a crunching-crackling sound coming from the adjacent brush. We looked at each other and stopped, the crackling also stopped...we were being tracked by something. My mind flashed back to the cougars den; maybe it had not been alone and its mate still lived on this tiny island...I was getting spooked and I don’t spook easily!
We decided that as long as we stayed out of the woods and just had a picnic all would be OK...
We did set up our picnic, ate some sandwiches and fed the baby but after a while we agreed our uneasiness was too much and we headed back along the beach toward the boat. By now, though, the tide had risen so much we were forced to walk right next to the forest edge and once again we heard the brush cracking just out of view next to each step we took. We nearly ran the last portion to the boat and launched it; feeling better the moment we were on the water and heading home. We never set foot there again.
PPS-Years later a couple of our friends were telling the exact same story as my original sojourn to that island. They had arrived in their boat just before dark and decided to camp. They experienced all I had and more including the raven. By morning they said they were truly frightened by the nights encounter. We both had for years independently been calling this haunted place by two different names, for us it was Ghost Island, our friends called it Cougar Island.