I Thought Camp Was a Safe Place
Warning: this is a true story
Hello my beautiful Campers,
Most of the time, I write fantasy stories here. But in the spirit of Halloween, this is a terrifying true story (with only names and small details changed for the anonymity of my friends). It’s the most supernatural, chilling thing I’ve ever experienced.
If you prefer to listen, this story was featured on Morbid Podcast: Listener Tales 66. Next week, we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming: a fantasy freewrite from Prompt #9, and then Prompt 10.
I love you all. I’m glad you’re here.
I was 8-years-old when my parents dropped me off at sleep-away camp for the first time. It was a small Christian Camp on a lake in New Hampshire.
And if you’re familiar with Christian subcultures, this was the not-too-spiritually-traumatic type of Christian Camp with campfires, capture the flag, waterskiing, co-ed dances, and “Jesus loves you” types of bible studies. Not the speaking-in-tongues, exorcisms, “Satan is coming for you”, “God orchestrated 9/11 to punish the rich” type of Christian Camp. And thankfully, there wasn’t much talk of demons, possessions, or any of that spiritual warfare stuff.
If you know, you really know.
My 45-pound, twiggy-legged, 8-year-old self had such a heavenly time in the New Hampshire woods that summer, that I went back every year throughout my childhood. I learned to waterski, I hiked hundreds of miles in the White Mountains, and I made some incredible lifelong friends. And sure, we loved to tell ghost stories around the campfire or jump out at each other in the woods at night, but Camp was the safest place on Earth to me. That is, until it wasn’t.
By high school, I was spending two full months at Camp every summer. And this year was extra-special—I was 16-years-old, and it was my last year as a camper. After this, my best friends and I would age-out, and we were determined to make it a summer to remember.
There were 12 of us bunking in a cabin together that summer, with two college-aged counselors there to lead bible studies and make sure we weren’t piercing each other’s ears (which we were). This oldest cabin was known to have a lot of traditions passed down over many generations of campers—initiations, late night dance parties, stolen ice cream from the kitchens, and singing around the campfire with our ‘brother cabin’.
But there was one tradition that was so secret, we swore up and down we’d never tell a soul, not even our future husbands, or children, or children’s children. And I’m only sharing it with you now because I learned recently that this tradition has been lost to time, for better or for worse. I say “for better or for worse” because it was during this tradition that I experienced the most bone-chilling, supernatural night of my life.
So I’ll let you in on this sacred ritual: on a few special nights throughout the summer, we would sneak out of our cabin, trek through the woods and down to the lake, and skinny dip under the moonlight. Now it may sound innocent enough, but if there’s one thing to know about Camp, sneaking out was strictly forbidden. Some of the older administrators at Camp patrolled the 500-acre property by night with flashlights, searching every corner for canoodling campers or, heaven forbid, some kind of intruder.
There was even an old wives’ tale about Camp in the 70’s, when someone on night patrol found a man sneaking onto the property by boat. When police arrested him that night, they found duct tape, rope, and a 10-inch knife in his backpack. Moral of the story: if you were caught out after hours, you’d be shipped home by morning.
On this fateful night, things did not go quite as planned. It was 1am when I woke up to my Baby-G watch alarm beeping next to my ear. I turned it off before it beeped again. Since I was a light sleeper, I’d been chosen by my cabin-mates to be the designated alarm. From my top bunk, I peered down to see our counselors, still sound asleep in the blue light of the moon.
Phew. This was all part of the plan.
I slipped out of bed, wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt and wool socks. I wasn’t normally a sleep-in-socks kind of person (read as: I’m not a sociopath), but this was the uniform for skinny-dipping nights. I woke my bottom bunkmate, trying my best not to rattle the metal bed or trip over the hiking boots strewn across the floor. If our counselors woke up, we’d be in serious trouble.
“Haley,” I whispered, pressing her shoulder. She opened her eyes. I pointed towards the door and mouthed, “Let’s go”.
And so Haley slipped out of her sleeping bag and woke the girls in the bunk beside us. As quietly as we could, we crept out the cabin door into the chilly New Hampshire night.
Haley and I walked, hand-in-hand, in nothing (and I mean nothing) but thick wool socks and oversized t-shirts, down the gravel paths, weaving through the woods towards the lakefront. It was a ½ mile walk, and the air was frigid, and the woods were dense around us. We walked in silence, just squeezing each other’s hands in anticipation, knowing that our 10 cabin-mates would be coming in twos just minutes behind us. It was best not to travel in a large group, so we could stay undetected.
We were on high alert. The faintest sound could tip off night patrol that campers were out of bed. We limped along the path without headlamps to light our way, tripping over roots and sharp rocks poking up through our socks.
I felt safe with Haley. She was one of my closest friends—bold, pragmatic, and unafraid. She could find a silver lining in anything, and to this day is one of the smartest humans I know—she works as a researcher and epidemiologist at Harvard now. I say this because what happened next cannot be explained away by science, not even by Haley.
We were nearing the lake, weaving our way down a widening tree-lined path, when we heard a branch crack in the woods. It was as if someone just a few yards to our right, hidden in the pine trees, had taken a step.
We froze. We stopped walking and held our breath, squeezing each other’s hands. A dim lamppost in the distance cast a warm light on the path. I turned to look at Haley and could see fear in her eyes.
She broke the silence and whispered to me, “It’s probably just a deer.”
I nodded.
We started walking again. But this time, someone or some thing was walking alongside us in the woods, just off the path. With each step we took, we heard leaves and twigs crunch to our right. When we stopped, the footsteps stopped too. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt, I still remember the feeling in my body, like my blood had turned to ice in my veins. Even in the cold night air, I held Haley’s hand so tightly we were slick with sweat.
We walked faster, eager to reach the waterfront where the woods opened up to a sandy beach and the moonlight reflected off the water. It seemed safer there. We couldn’t turn back now, the walk back to the cabin was pitch dark and wooded. It was safer to continue on.
The steps began again in the woods, and they were getting closer. Twigs snapped and leaves crunched and suddenly, the footsteps quickened until something enormous was crashing through the woods towards us. Haley let out a tiny whimper, and this time, the steps did not stop with ours. The crashing continued, frantic and nearly on top of us.
And then it emerged — shining in the lamplight, a snarling, hairless creature barreled across the path just in front of us. It hissed and choked as if it’s throat was constricted. Its motion was thrashing, frantic, and frenzied. It crossed the path, hunched over on all fours, like some kind of contorted, long-limbed, naked human. I remember its emaciated form and arched spine, and the sound of its frenzied steps, lurching over the rocky path like hooves. And then, without even glancing our way, it disappeared down the hill, into the woods towards the lake.
I was in shock. Haley and I stood in silence for what felt like an eternity, afraid to move or breathe.
“Oh my god.” I whispered, trembling.
“What was that?” Haley whispered back, terrified.
And before we could say another word, two friends came tip-toeing down the path, approaching us hand-in-hand, cheery and unaware of the horror we had just witnessed. And looking back, I don’t know why we didn’t say something to them in that moment. But we grouped up in silence and continued our pilgrimage down to the lake. Haley and I squeezed each other’s hands so tightly that our fingers turned white and sweat pooled between our palms.
I wracked my brain for some reasonable explanation — a mangey, rabid coyote? It couldn’t be, this was larger than any coyote or wolf I’d ever seen. A fisher cat? A sick deer? A black bear? None of it made sense.
I know it sounds crazy, but we still skinny-dipped in the lake that night, and crept quietly back into our beds, undetected. In our terrified stupor, Haley and I convinced the whole group to walk back together this time, without sharing what we’d seen. We didn't want to scare them. And more than that, we didn’t even have the words yet. After sneaking back into the cabin, I crawled into Haley’s lower bunk and we stayed up whispering to each other, trying to process this horrific thing we’d seen. I was so relieved that she’d seen it just the way I had—the hairless limbs, the snarling sounds, protruding spine, and hoofed feet.
“It seemed terrified, like it was running from something,” she said. I thought so too.
I’m not a woo-woo person. To be honest, to this day I’m a bit of a cynic, even rolling my eyes at astrology, ghost stories, or healing crystals. But I will never forget the feeling of evil, unspeakable darkness that surrounded that creature. For many years after, we never spoke of it again. But something happened just a few years ago, that brought it all flooding back.
We weren’t the only ones to see that creature that night.
I’m 30-years-old now, and Haley is married. I was a bridesmaid in her wedding and at her bachelorette party, all her dearest friends gave toasts. I decided it was finally time to tell the world about what we’d seen that night, this time under a more light-hearted lens.
“If you’re ever going to live through something inexplicable and traumatic, you want Haley by your side.” I told the story for the first time with an audience of Haley’s closest friends, sparing no details about this haunted thing we’d seen so many years ago at summer camp.
Afterwards, another bridesmaid approached me, a mutual friend we’d grown up with at Camp. She’d never heard the story before, and she was uncharacteristically serious.
“I have to tell you something. I didn’t want to share this with the whole group, it might’ve thrown off the mood. But you have to talk to my sister, Erica. She was working at camp that summer, and she saw something that looked just like that.”
And so she retold Erica’s story, and I had chills running over my whole body. Erica was a counselor at Camp that very same summer, just a few years older than us. She snuck out of her cabin late one night to meet her camp crush down by the lake. They hid in the shadows, on the porch of the scuba shack. (It’s a little building just perched on the shore of the lake).
Erica and her summer crush sat whispering and kissing when they heard something crashing through the woods—the very same direction Haley and I had watched this creature go as it ripped past us towards the lake. They looked on in horror as a hairless thing, heaving and snarling on all fours, crept towards the waters’ edge, hunched over in the moonlight, and drank water from the lake.
It didn’t look at them, or seem to know they were there at all. It paused for just a moment at the water’s edge then took off frantically back into the forest.
The next morning, the Camp Pastor called an emergency meeting. And this is where things take an even more terrifying turn. I know this man well—we’ll call him Pastor Greg. He’s a kind, middle-aged theologian, who spent his summers offering mentorship to the staff. During the year when Camp wasn’t in session, he pastored a Presbyterian Church on the East Coast.
For those who don’t know, Presbyterian Christians are stereotypically stiff, sometimes called God’s “frozen chosen”. They don’t worship with their hands up, or cry in church, and they definitely don’t talk about demons or dark spiritual things. Think staid hymns, wooden church benches, and community potluck dinners.
But on this morning, Pastor Greg gathered the Camp staff together for an unprecedented morning meeting, looking unusually solemn.
“I didn’t sleep last night. And, I’m not sure how to say this.” He looked around at the group of 40 apprehensive counselors.
“I woke up with a weight on my chest, like something evil was here on Camp grounds. I don’t know, I’ve never felt anything like it before. So I stayed up and prayed. And I know Camp is a safe place, and God is present here. But I felt I needed to share this with you.” He sighed.
“There is a dark presence here, and I encourage you all to stay vigilant.”
Erica and her camp crush didn’t dare tell Pastor Greg about what they’d seen the night before. And now, years later, her younger sister was sharing her account for the very first time with me.
I felt the blood drain from my face. I didn’t know whether to relieved that I wasn’t alone or crazy, or like my understanding of the world as a safe place, undisturbed by some dark unseen power, was shattering before my eyes. Even Pastor Greg, with his cheerful and composed demeanor, had felt disturbed by a dark presence at Camp.
As I’m writing this, it’s been over 10 years since that encounter. And it’s still the scariest, most unexplainable thing I’ve ever seen. It’s made me question the thin veil between our world and the world of “other”.
I’m starting to believe there are rare, spiritual places in the world where that veil is especially thin, and sometimes frightening and dark things crawl through it. And maybe more often, beautiful, divine things peek through too. Camp is one of those thin places, I guess. And I know I came out on top, with enough lifelong friends and precious memories in those New Hampshire woods to last a lifetime.
The End.
And now, for my absolute favorite comments on the Morbid Podcast: Listener Tales episode.
as a fellow NH tween camper, this hits!!!!
a chupacabra tale 👀 this is crazy and i’m scared (it’s daylight) !!!!