Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First Person (Peripheral Narrator)
"Death in the Woods" features a classic example of an unreliable narrator.
Although the narrator is present for some of the events of the story, he doesn't play a role in the plot or even interact with most of the people he writes about. In fact, we come to learn that the narrator was only really present for one scene: when the men from town discover the old woman's body. The rest of the story seems to be some sort of combination between imagination, bits from other stories, and personal experiences.
Remember how the narrator says that he "worked on the farm of a German" (5.11)? What about when he talks about his own "half-uncanny, mystical adventure with dogs" (5.12)? The narrator attributes these stories to the old woman, using pieces of his own life to fill in the blanks of her story. As a result, his interpretation of the story (and even the events that he describes) don't necessarily have anything to do with what actually happened.