I had a similar thing happen. When I was 13-14, my friends and I used to play paintball in the woods near my house. This wasn't a super rural area. I felt very safe there and I knew the woods like the back of my hand. There was probably 3-5 miles of forest on either side of the house, and I knew every single trail in detail. I was never worried about getting lost in those woods. Worst case scenario, I figured, there was a road if I walked far enough in any direction.
Well, one day we were out for our usual game of paintball. Typically we stuck to the trails and might duck behind a tree or some brush for cover. The foliage got thick if you got off the trails, and nobody wanted to deal with being poked and prodded by a bunch of branches and god forbid, poison ivy or worse. Well, thinking I was the most clever kid ever, I went for it. I'd get an edge on my friends by going further off the beaten path. I parted some brush and wandered into some of the thicker foliage/tall grass, thinking I'd look for a good angle to watch the nearby path and tag any of my friends that came by. In my mind, I didn't walk more than 50 feet into the brush there. It wasn't far, but the foliage was thick here and I temporarily lost sight of my starting path. And after that, it was like a lightswitch flipped. The minute I realized that I didn't recognize my surroundsings anymore, I was hit by an indescribable feeling of dread. A little bit sick to my stomach, cold, and like this was a Bad Idea. There was no way I could get lost in these woods, I thought, I've lived here my entire life, but something in my brain told me, "Go back". I started to psyche myself out and quickly reneged on my decision to hide there, retracing my steps to get back to the trail I started on. Only, nothing looked familiar at this point. I hadn't gone far enough to get turned around. I was certain this was the way back. And yet the path never appeared.
I panicked more. Sounds around me started to fade to silence. I yelled out for my friends, hoping to marco-polo my way back to the paths where we typically played, but they didn't reply. It might've been the sheer fear at this point, but at one point I swear I heard a child's giggling voice.
I can't really describe how terrified I was at this time. Even though I felt like I was no more than 20 feet off path, I didn't recognize anything around me. I started to run in the direction I thought home was. Surely I'd hit a familiar path at some point. But I didn't. It actually seemed like the foliage was thicker than usual. Nothing prepared me for the level of terror I felt being lost in those woods, and still, I rationally knew that civilization had to be nearby. Except it didn't feel like it. It was starting to get dark, it was eerily quiet, and I recognized nothing.
I walked for what seemed like an eternity, and finally found myself on a path. It wasn't one I knew, but I followed it knowing that if I didn't find a road by sundown I'd be absolutely screwed out here. Eventually the path opened up to a road and... I was not near my house. I was at a road some 4 miles away. I walked the longest walk I'd ever walked back to my house and found my friends. They said I'd been gone for almost 5 hours. It certainly didn't feel like that to me. They didn't believe me when I said I'd gotten lost, and insisted that I made up an elaborate excuse to avoid getting shot with paintballs.
To this day I have no idea how I got lost in those woods. I never went off the trails after that. Something weird happened there, and I doubt I'll ever figure out what.