A True Ghost Story

This will be the first summer in 13 long years I won't be attending the summer camp that I've mentioned a couple times on this before. The new season started up just a few days ago. I'm going to miss it terribly.

Last summer, I became the new trip leader and got to go on all kinds of wild hikes with campers. My responsibilities included, but were not limited to: carrying all of the food, making sure the campers did not stray from the path and kept a good pace, carry things they were tired of carrying, morale and motivation, saving their lives from peril, setting up tents, building a campfire, and last but not least, campfire stories. No surprise that this was my favorite part. Now most of my personal fables recounted on this site are a bit inappropriate for most children due to vulgarity, substance abuse, baffoonery, and other behavior outside the scope of universal morality. Luckily, my abundant experience at the camp has armed me with an arsenal of PG classic campfire tales, riddles, and jokes, ranging in genre from supernatural horror to tasteless potty humor. You must make accomodations givin the age range of your audience weighed against how long you'd like to stay up at night consoling a tearful nine year old that there is, in fact, no such thing as a bipedal Tiger Manbeast on the mountain we've hiked, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be. (I put a counselor through this when he told me the story when I was just a mere nine year old).

This particular Homeric episode took place on Mt. Chocorua in the Kancamagus Scenic Byway in the White Mountain National Forest (somewhere in NH). It was a brutal hike up, some of the kids were only 10 years old, but they were fierce and manned it all the way up to the small cabin we would stay at like troopers. It was a decent sized cabin and we were all bushed so I set up the camp fire while the other trip leader checked out the latrine. The latrine was grim. The one time I used it the door got stuck and trapped me inside. I could have killed myself. Anyways, we started trading campfire stories. The campers knew some of the classics, like "The Hook Man," "The Hang Man," "The Maryland Strangler," or "Johnny Appalachian."

"Man, we hear those ones every year," piped up Dasner, one of the 10 year olds who'd been at camp two years now. "Does anyone have a real ghost story?"

The slightly older kids claimed to, and tried to tell some first hand encounters, but they were clearly making them up to scare poor Dasner and failing miserably. I let them have their fun for a bit before calling them out, emasculating them and instructing them to never watch television.

"I've never seen a ghost, but my Dad has," I told them.

"No way."
"Shut up, Travis."
"You're full of shit and won't feed us."

"Stop complaining, you'll truly be a man when you can find nourishment in what raw nature provides you with and watch your language. My father saw a ghost once, and it's a true story."

"For real?" Dasner's voice, full of innocent wonder.

"Fo'rizzle, y'all. Straight truth."

"Let's hear it."

It was still light out and Dasner was old enough to start truly questioning the reality of the world around us, so I went into it.

"My Dad used to stay in this cabin in Rye, New Hampshire while he went to UNH, right by the ocean. It was the beginning of the summ,er and he and his grandfather, my great-grandfather, still alive to this day, had saved up enough money to buy him his first brand new car. A '56 Chevy Bel Air."

"Six cylinder?"

"That's right, Dasner, you're a very wise boy now shut up I'm telling a story."

"Yes, sir."

"It was hand-painted a urine yellow, but that's not important. What's important is that it was a brand new car and he was going to take it for it's maiden voyage on a spin down along the coast for a while. He asked his roommate if he'd like to come, but it was getting late and he was going to bed. So my Dad hops in this Chevy and takes off down the road to the beach.

On the way to the beach is this tiny bridge, it's paved now, I've been over it a few times, but it was wooden then. He comes up to the bridge but has to pull off to the side of the road before crossing it, because there's this woman standing on the bridge, in the middle of the road. She's very pale and wearing this long white gown, and she's looking at my Dad. Her arms are outstretched like this,"

I stretch my arms straight out and gnarl up my fingers like claws.

"And her face is stretched out like she's screaming, but isn't making a sound. My Dad's a rational man and a bit worried about this, so he shuts his car and his headlights off. But he can still see the woman. She is glowing with this soft white light. Then she started moving, without taking a single step. She slowly starts gliding towards the car. This upsets my father, naturally, but he's frozen with fear and doesn't know what to do. Before she reaches the end of the bridge, she turns to her left and heads to the guard rail. She floats up and over the guard rail and down underneath the bridge."

"No way!"

"Yes, way. My Dad flips out, turns the engine and steps on it as fast as he can. He flies over the bridge and on the other side is a tiny hill before the coastline. But he has to swerve off the road and back on to avoid hitting this big black thing in the middle of the road on the hill. It's like a big, dead animal but bigger than a man. He has no frickin' clue what it was. He drives as fast as he can back to the cabin and wakes up his roommate. The roommate doesn't believe him for a second and instantly starts making fun of him, but agrees to go back to the bridge with him to check it out. The bring some flashlights and go back, but the lady and the big, black shape were gone. They looked underneath the bridge, but there was just water and the old wood poles from the remaints of the old bridge there before. His roommate started calling "Here, witchy witchy witchy," but my Dad told him straight faced and wide eyed what he had seen. And he told me when I was your age, even showed me the bridge, and will tell me now that it's the truth. And my Dad wouldn't lie to me."

".."
".."
"..Wow."
"No way, you made that up."

"Are you calling my father a liar, Austin? Because he once also told me I can never tie children to trees and leave them alone in the middle of the woods all night, but if he lied about the story then I guess he lied about that too, huh."

"You wouldn't."

"Are you a gambling man, Austin?"

"Wait, wait, wait..." Totally typical Dasner. "So you're saying that that actually happened? To your Dad?"

"Yeah. I definitely said that. I'm glad your paying attention. Now here's what you're not going to believe, and I didn't know it until just last year. But that happened to him twice."

They were wowed by this too, like I was when he first told me. I didn't want to believe him either, but he assured me this was the truth, just like he had when he first told me and my brother. He even said once he was at a restaurant in Portsmouth with a friend and he overheard the booth behind him, a man was describing for somebody else the exact same thing. My Dad got up and went over and introduced himself, and confessed the same exact event had happened to him too, twice. Neither of them knew what to make of it. But my father swears to this day it occured, and will never go back on his word. He's not a man of many jokes or pranks. This is legit. This shit went down. And I'll never doubt him. One hell of a story though.