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Tommy took a long drink from his flask as he watched his friends, their faces lit by the firelight of their modest campfire. It was their annual camping trip, late October and the air had begun to cool a couple days earlier. It was perfect, him and four of his closest friends.
Then they had started on ghost stories and urban legends, all of them groan worthy but occasionally there was the odd one that left that sensation of paranoia when you heard a rustle in the trees, just out of view. Outside the safety of the flickering light.
Mark, the skeptic of their group, leaned back on his log with a scoff and a grin as he pulled the bottle from his lips. "Come on, Hook Man?," he began, pausing to take another sip of his beer. "That's a story for kids, made to scare teens away from the urge to make out in their cars. All these urban legends are bullshit. Sure, some start off as truth but none of the popular ones are real."
"Yeah, fairy tales with a little blood," Mike commented.
Sarah laughed at that. "Yeah, like Bloody Mary. I tried that in the mirror ages ago and all I got was ghosted and then yelled at by mom for wasting candles," she emphasized it with a groan as the group laughed lightly at her pun.
"No shit, you were a Bloody Mary kid?" Mike asked, leaning forward. "You really believed and wanted to take the risk?"
Sarah shrugged. "I mean, yeah. Why not try something scary? I was excited until I realized it was fake. Guess I kinda knew but still."
Mike nodded in agreement.
Amy chimed in then, shaking her head slowly. "I could never bring myself to it. Even ouija boards give me creeps and I know they're fake."
Mark chuckled. "Well, no worries. None of these are real anyway, so what does it matter?"
Tommy paused, the flask just a breath away from his lips as he locked eyes on Mark for a moment. "There's one that's real."
A calm settled over the group as all eyes turned to focus on him, broken only by the shifting of burning logs.
He let the moment sit for a moment as he took a long sip from the flask then took a deep breath, releasing it slow. "Have you heard of Camp Hawthorne?"
Brows furrowed immediately, looks were shared, and slowly heads began to shake in neglect of recognition at the name. Everyone except Amy, she was quiet with eyes wide as she focused intensely on Tommy. "Ye- yeah, I heard some about that."
Tommy wasn't surprised. Despite her dedicated disinterest in ghosts, Amy was the one of them most familiar with true crime stories. He nodded slowly as he held her gaze, flexing his lip a moment to hide a smirk as everyone's gaze shifted from him to Amy then back to him.
"Dude, what is Camp Hawthorne?" Mike asked as he leaned in closer to hear better.
"Well," Tommy started as he changed his tone to something more attuned to a camp guide. "Back in the '80s, my uncle was one of the counselors that worked there."
He paused as he caught Mark roll his eyes, he didn't hear it but he knew his friend well enough to know he was already convinced it was fake.
Tommy continued. "He told me how beautiful it was, the activities they hosted, everything. A beautiful lakeside campground in the remote pine barren. Breathtaking landscapes and crystal clear waters. Naturally, I wanted to go."
The camp sat nestled deep in the wilderness, a serene summer retreat established in the 1950s, where families and scout troops flocked for weeks of unspoiled fun. Eight rustic cabins encircled a vast open area, their wooden walls hewn from local pines, each one a cozy haven with screened porches and bunk beds that creaked under the weight of excited kids. At the heart stood a massive stone fire pit, ringed by boulders worn smooth from countless gatherings, and overlooking it all was the larger administrative building - a two-story hub with a mess hall, offices, and staff quarters. Not far off, scattered hunting cabins dotted the woods, left dormant during the bustling summers to let the wildlife be. The whole place was a bubble of joy, isolated from the hustle of city life, with trails winding to Hawthorne Lake's glassy shores, where a rickety dock invited swims and canoe paddles.
Tommy told it the exact way he heard about. "Mornings were spent with the fresh smell of bacon frying in the mess hall before they moved onto crafts. Friendship bracelets and other shit, typical for your normal summary camp. After lunch there was real excitement, kids yelling as they took turns swinging into the lake, swim lessons and plenty of free time. Honestly, the way I heard it really made it sound like the lake was the biggest selling point for all those kids."
He paused and smiled, thinking about how it must have been before his lips fell into a frown. His tone became more serious.
"So, the camp had been operating for something close to thirty years by the time the story begins to take focus. To quote my uncle, 'Nothing gold can stay'," he paused to swallow, taking a deep breath before continuing.
"It was winter of '89, off-season of course. Quiet, dormant, a pleasant oasis in the pines waiting to come alive with the sounds of summary fun." He paused again, shaking his head as he looked to each of them and met their gaze. His gaze lingered on Amy for a moment longer then he focused on the fire.
"My uncle was one of the people who had locked up, so he became involved pretty quick after the events unfolded and he learned about everything that happened at the once beautiful, family friendly campground. No one knows if it was planned or if it just happened to be the right location at the time, though it would become unfortunate for others soon enough. Something... someone... found the campground and decided to make it their home. The papers called him a drifter, news called him a brute. Whatever he was, he was huge. A hulking monster of a man, scarred across his face like he had been in a fight with a bear or on the wrong end of a chainsaw. No one ever learned his name, few people even approached or spoke to him unless it was necessary. The few that did reported that he didn't speak much, if at all."
Amy nodded, it was following along with what she had heard about the story as well so far. She glanced over to her friends and saw that they were all attentive, even Mark for once.
Tommy scoffed briefly. "He made the campground his own personal kingdom. Exploited the natural isolation they had used for retreat and turned it into a prison. What was once a place of joy and laughter was twisted into something cruel and horrifying. The campground woke up early to a different kind of screaming, no longer happy but fearful. Desperate." He paused and swallowed, shaking his head. "Sometimes final."
He let that sit a moment, taking a long sip from his flask and hesitating briefly before taking another.
"Every single one of those cabins was turned into an exhibit of pain and torture, remodeled for the sole purpose of ensuring that his victims never had a moment of comfort. He dragged his victims inside and used whatever he could scavenge from the grounds to restrain them. Rope, tape, chains, zipties, wires, shredded cloth," he trailed off a moment. "He used anything and everything. The bastard was as creative as he was sadistic."
There were murmurs from his friends at that, some shaking their heads in disbelief. Mark was the first to speak up.
"So what happened to them?" He asked quietly, a hint of hesitation in the question.
Tommy met his gaze. "He was a serial rapist. Suspected murderer but that's because they never found the bodies to confirm it. They simply disappeared. Some speculate he had ties with traffickers, it would explain how he managed to pay for the food he would go into town for."
Mark was quiet at that.
"Did they catch him?" Sarah asked, her tone hopeful
Tommy glanced over to her then to Amy. "No, they tried to take him in but he fled. Bleeding as they shot him, plenty of blood to prove that from what my uncle heard but they didn't find his body either. After a while it became impossible to follow his trail. Rumor is that the vines had overgrown the path and the slight dips in the trail became pitfalls. No one knows for sure but somehow two officers didn't return from trying to push deeper into the forest after him, just gone. No screams, no blood, no bodies. It doesn't help that they matched his victim profile. It got people talking, building up the rumors even more."
He took a deep breath as he raised a finger to signal he needed a pause, lowering it as he began again. "See, my uncle was really familiar with a girl he had met at the camp, a fellow counselor. He got involved with all of this because it had been her turn to go check on the campground and she didn't return. Now, several people knew and confirmed she had gone alone but those people also knew my uncle was close with her and so they wanted to know if he knew anything about what might have happened. He was a suspect for a while before the officers got to the campground. They found her, Jenny, and she was alive when they got to her. That was also the night that they went after him, the monster. They radio'd back that Jenny had been found but then those officers and Jenny were never heard from again. The entire campground was empty when backup arrived and they searched the area for miles to find nothing."
"Whoa," Mike said quietly as he leaned back. "Is that all to it?"
Tommy looked over and shook his head. "That's all for the official story. The rest happened after they shut down the camp. No one wanted to return or send their kids after learning the horrors that had occurred there. Camp Hawthorne was deserted that year. That summer though, something changed. Local hikers began to disappear, vehicles would be found empty on roads passing by the campground, even the hunting cabins a few miles from the campgrounds were reported to be cursed. Animals didn't stay in the area, birds were absent, it was silent. An eerie, unnatural silence for somewhere that remote in the forest. The police put out warnings on going near the campground but of course that inspired a wave of thrillseekers, most of whom disappeared. Those that didn't reported the sensation of being watched, pitfalls and snare traps, and a dense fog that had somehow turned them around and separated the group. From what I hear, that fog shows up any time a suitable victim is on the grounds. The town has a quiet ban on it now, no longer proclaiming it forbidden due to how many people had gone missing when they tried to warn people."
"Thats fucked up. Couldn't they fence it off or something?" Mark asked incredulously.
Mike laughed and smacked his leg. "Like that ever stopped us from going exploring abandoned buildings. People are gonna do what they want."
Mark didn't have a rebuttal for that. He opened his mouth to speak but Sarah cut him off.
"Still,couldnt they barricade the roads or something? Make it difficult to get there?" She inquired, brow furrowed with thought.
Tommy shrugged. "It wouldn't help. The disappearances have occurred on more public roads as well. People think it's some kind of curse, especially when there are glimpses of a figure matching the description. Except for one thing."
Silence fell as they waited, attention focused once more.
Tommy's attention shifted back to the fire. "They say the campgrounds has its own creeper now, a huge beast of a man that wears a canvas bag over his head with a hole for one eye. Some suspect it's the same man, brought back by some demonic pact or curse on the land. Others think it's bullshit, but no one can explain the disappearances, the dense fog that appears unannounced, or the fact that no one can walk to Camp Hawthorne anymore. Those that try either disappear or get lost in the fog, ending up back where they started or miles away. The kind of phenomenon that keeps the stories and rumors alive. I think it helps keep him alive too. Eventually they renamed it to separate it from the events at Camp Hawthorne, naming it after the lake instead. So whatever the truth of it is, he's now the creeper of Camp Rook Lake."
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