Camp Evil

From: Savana ()
Story type: Ghost
Location: Camp Galilee
Source: Form Submission

Every year my friends and I go to Camp Galilee for Vacation Bible Camp. Only people who are old enough can stay overnight for 3 days. The little ones go home every night. Well, we usually go to the bonfire when it gets dark by the lake and make smores.

One of my friends wanted to get some scary stories going so she went into the woods to scare some of the younger kids. I gave her my faux-fur blanket to "add effect". She popped out of the near woods and screamed. She started laughing and screamed again. Then she disappeared, and I thought she was putting my blanket back in the cabin. But when she didn't come back, a few of my friends and I went to find her. My blanket was still gone, and we couldn't find her anywhere.

After about a half-hour of searching, we decided to tell a counselor and our pastor. Soon everyone was looking for our friend. A few of us went into the woods with lanterns and flashlights and big branches just in case we had to defend ourselves where my friend was last seen. As we reached the heart of the woods, we saw a puddle of blood and my blanket, which was also soaked. We had to follow the trail of blood which led to the lakeside just a few yards away from the hiking trail. The rocks had drops of blood scattered all over them, and we could see with our lights that the water was red. And from where I stood, I saw my friend's distorted face....the ripped flesh...her mouth still open in frozen horror. That's when I threw up on the rocks.

Later, they dragged her torn body up from the shore. It looked like she had been attacked with a knife...a somewhat dull one by the ragged cuts on her body, almost with a sharp rock. The thing that verified that it was caused by a human and not a bear, was the mark on her torso. It was a circle with four lines coming our of it, which turned out to be a bear in an old Indian Language. And it it wasn't brutal and disgusting enough, her intestines were ripped out, and her heart was stuffed in her mouth. Here's what we think happened:

Clue One: My blanket was bearskin. My uncle wanted to give it to me on my birthday, and I figured it was fake. Turns out he got it from an Indian in South Dakota. It was part of a dying ceremony; unknowest to my uncle.

Clue Two: The hiking trail we used for so many years ran through an old Indian gravesite. The pioneer graves were only a mile away. We had heard of hauntings, but had never encountered them. We thought they were just stories.

Clue Three: When the Indians were fighting to protect their homes on the plains of the Midwest; one died in the most horrible way for killing his Chief in anger on the battlefield. His intestines had been cut out with a rock knife, his heart stuffed in his throat, and taken to the middle of a lake to be rid of. The Chief killed was one called Stone Bear; and hence the bear mark engraved on his killer's chest. Stone Bear was wrapped in a bearskin on his burial day. That bear had a cub, and that bear had a cub...and so on until one bear had been shot and had its skin used to honor a lost one...only to be sold to my uncle. I cannot get the image out of my mind, Synthia's mangled face, the crimson war paint on the rocks.....Wait. Did I say war paint? Check your blankets and don't wander too far into the woods, especially at night.

(This did not happen to me. My friend's grandmother swears it to be true. She still says she checks outside her window at night to look into the woods, to make sure that Synthia or her Killer is not there. She has burned the bearskin blanket and sprinkled the ashes in Lake Sukagua.)