Sorry for the long almost irrelevant story I just haven't told it on here and your camping story reminded me of mine from last year.
I'm with you on the "nobody believes me story". 4 of us were camping (couples) by ourselves for the 1st time. Fun little canoe trip down a river. The typical where a bus comes and picks you up at a certain destination about an hour and a half trip, 30 minute drive or so back.
Anyways, we get back to camp everything's fine this is day 2 of 3 where we leave on the 3rd day. We get kicked out of our camp morning of day 2 for taking a shower in the same stall (still had our swim suits on I just "shouldn't have been" in the ladies room). So we ask around the town for places to camp that are free to public (we had been paying to camp at the site) and we hear about this 1 area a few miles away.
Long story short we get to this open site where it's just us. We see maybe 3 or 4 trucks pass by the entire 4 hours we're setring up camp and hanging around the fire (dirt/gravel road leading back to presumably another camping ground [we never followed it] about 30 feet from our tents). We were literally in the middle of no where but there was a rope swing by the water, a fire pit already built and a hole dug out with a log over it and TP in a plastic bag left by it (how fucking awesome right?)
We head to bed @ about 12ish and about a half hour after we lay down I hear a noise by our fire that was still going that sounded like somebody walking. I tried to ignore it assuming it was the other guy in our group out peeing or getting food or something. It continued for about a minute of constant walking sounds. My girlfriend was reading a book and I was messing around on my phone (no service only games) and she whispers "do you hear that?" and I tell her "yeah it's just Tom going pee". About a minute after that, the guy in the other tent hollars at me and says "Party are you peeing" and I go "noo...." and his girlfriend starts freaking out. She's screaming for him to turn his citronella candle out and saying "someone's out there!" and just generally causing a panic which makes my girlfriend freak out and start sobbing "guys what are you taking about!?".
I stand up in my tent (about a 6 foot tent) and try to be as stealthy as I can to look through the mesh on the top. I see nothing so I sit back down, tell the other tent that everything's fine and that we were going to sleep. He finally gets her to calm down; were telling them it's just the fire and I can hear them whispering and he sniffling like she's crying , my girlfriend falls asleep crying on me and I stay up for another hour and a half just listening to what sounded like walking on the road next to our camp site. I finally pass out.
I've never been so happy to see sunlight in my life. We load up, chalk it up to drinking and continue on our way. We stop to get gas some snacks and to piss. While I'm in the bathroom I told him I was up for another hour and he says "you heard it to?" And I immediately know what he's talking about and I said "the walking on the gravel?" and we didn't say anything else about it. It still gives me chills just typing it. Literally thought we were going to be attacked by something and had only a multi tool in my tent.
Tl;Dr go canoeing, get kicked out of camp, go back woods camping alone, hear noises, almost end up as plot of Stephen King movie.