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samu3lk posted:I got a Goosebumps / Are You Afraid of the Dark vibe from it. It's the sort of corny "scary story" a kid would tell at a slumber party. I hope you guys like those kinds of stories then, because I've got a couple! In the mid-2000s (think 2003-2008 or so) I went to a summer camp in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. It's a mountainous, heavily forested, and honestly quite beautiful region, even for a city kid like me. This particular camp was pretty cool, and it was on the shores of a lake in the area--specifically, somewhere near St. Regis Lakes. The nearest town of any note was 2+ hours drive away IIRC, so yeah this was a pretty wooded and isolated area. Apparently that specific area's got some history behind it--according to the rumor mill, it was once used as a base of operations by the Green Mountain Boys, which makes some sense since Vermont was not very far away. It also had some history that the administrators preferred people didn't talk about. David's Girl The most famous story got a bit distorted and I heard a couple of different versions, but they were all so alike and told by people who had nothing to do with each other, so I'm inclined to believe it. Background: at the beginning of every session (there were two, each a month long, running one after the other from early July to early September) campers were supposed to turn in any and all meds to the infirmary so that the nurses could administer them properly rather than leaving a bunch of preteens/early teens to manage their own medicinal intakes. One girl didn't turn her meds in, supposedly because she would deliberately take too many pills and get high off them. She manages to hide this from the administration well enough, until one night when she did her usual thing and ended up sneaking out of her cabin. She went to the lake, where she either decided to go for a swim or lost her balance and fell into the water. Presumably she was either to doped-up to swim or had a seizure--I've heard both, and it doesn't really make a difference--and drowned. The camp, of course, became stricter about turning in meds the following year, and the story entered the camp's mythology. I lived in one particular cabin when I was about 14. It had an L-shaped corridor that connected to all the rooms. Here's my dogshit attempt at a map:  One of my counselors that year was an Englishman named David. He was tall and chubby but built. He'd been a counselor at this camp for some years by that point, so he knew what was what. One morning, we see him rearranging some furniture in his room, and in not much of a talking mood. He was a pretty taciturn guy sometimes, though, so I just chalked it up to him wanting to make some space in his room and not being in a chatty mood because hey, moving furniture around sucks. It wasn't until a few months later, talking with one of my friends, that I heard the full story: David was asleep that night, until he woke up in the wee hours of the morning. When he finally shook off his grogginess, he noticed a girl standing in the hallway--and not just any girl. He'd been working in the camp when that girl drowned, and this girl seemed a bit too familiar. As far as I know, the usual happened: David proceeded to poo poo several bricks, ghost disappears, he makes it through the night shaken up but ultimately no worse for the wear, and we the living got a story to share on Internet comedy forums. Oh, and the furniture in the counselors' room for rearranged to both partially block up the door and give David a clear view of the hallway so he'd be ready in case this girl decided to get a bit closer next time. The sessions that year ended, and David never worked in that camp again. The Cabin on the Hill This was a co-ed camp, and the cabin groups were divided according to age and gender. So Cabin Group X would be for 14-15 year olds, with a corresponding Cabin Group X Boys and Cabin Group X Girls groups. If Cabin Group X was too big, as was often the case with groups not restricted to a single age, then that group got divided into A and B parts. So generally our friends in Cabin Group X were divided into Cabin Group X-A Boys, X-B Boys, X-A Girls, and X-B Girls. One particular group of girls (aged about 15, so by the example I've set out so far they'd be Cabin Group X-B Girls) lived in a cabin that was a bit separate from the main bod of the camp. Not that it was isolated or anything, just that it was further from other cabins than most cabins were to each other. As such, it was on top of a particularly wooded hill that gave off a sort of bad-juju vibe. Probably because it was apart from the rest of the camp. Self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess. There are two stories I know of surrounding this cabin: one is pretty mundane, the other pretty standard. Much as I'd like to get the mundane one out of the way first, it does benefit from the creep factor of the second story, so I'll start with that one. One day, a few friends and I were chatting with a counselor for that group of girls, so this is straight from the horse's mouth: she was in bed reading one night, when she heard her girls start talking in the next room. It was past lights-out and they were supposed to be settling into sleep already, so she calls out to them to be quiet. They promptly pipe down, and she goes back to reading. A bit later, the voices start again. Now she's starting to get a little irritated, so she calls out again for them to pipe down. Again, the girls settle down pretty quickly. Then she hears what sounds like her girls opening and closing their trunks repeatedly. Now she's getting pretty annoyed, and she yells out to them to settle down or there'd be consequences. At that point, the front door opens. Her entire cabin group walks in. They'd been on a field trip to the movie theater all night. Come to think of it, I don't think that counselor returned the following year either. Strange. OK, now for the mundane story: a few years after the last story, I'm working in the camp as an assistant counselor. My job description: cheap labor. Take the maggot-infested garbage bags to the nearby landfill. Fill in for a counselor on his day off. poo poo like that. While not particularly glamorous, the gig did have its perks, and the most satisfying was I basically had free reign to do whatever I wanted as long as I hadn't been assigned to anything. I could walk around the camp to my heart's content, which was nice. So one day I decided to explore the camp a little. Now, by this point the economic crisis was well underway, so fewer people were coming to the camp. I think the camper population fell by half in the six years I was there. As such, some of the cabins were left empty, including--surprise!--the one that was apart from the rest of the camp. By this point I'd heard the stories, and figured I'd poke around. Even if the doors were locked--which they were--I could at least peek through the windows and who knows? Maybe I'd see that ghost girl people were making such a fuss about. I didn't see any spooky spirits, and for the most part the cabin was empty save for some spiders and dust. But there were a few things scattered around here and there: an old hoodie, and some pages torn from a Disney coloring book. The administration probably just didn't bother cleaning out the cabin and all that crap was from the previous summer, when the building was actually occupied, but still. Again, pretty mundane, but it made for a somewhat spooky image given that building's history. That's all my stories. I didn't go back the year after I was an assistant counselor, but that had nothing to do with ghosts or anything like that. In all my six years there, I never experienced anything out of the ordinary, and to be honest I feel kind of cheated in that respect. Maybe I'll go back one day if I have nothing to do for a summer and do some proper ghost-huntin'.
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Jun 10, 2015 19:16
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 16:11 |
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