Your True Tales
March 2004 – Page 9

Haunted Camp Grounds
by Claire

A few months ago, I went camping with two male friends in a heavily wooded area of southern Maine. When we got there, it was only about 9 p.m., but it was completely dark except for the headlights of the car. As we were pulling into the clearing where we were going to camp, we heard an extremely disturbing and unearthly screaming sound. The clearing was far, far away from any human habitations, and the sound was unlike any I have ever heard before in my life. At first I wondered if it was just my imagination, but then the two men both looked at each other and one asked if we had heard the sound, too. We all had heard it and were a bit shaken by it, but we decided to stay and set up camp anyway.

The men got out of the car and started gathering wood for a fire, keeping the headlights of the car on all the while. One of the men, wandered off a little deeper into the woods to find better wood, and when he came back a few minutes later, he was clearly shaken and he said, "Claire, why don't you go stand in the light over by the car until we get this fire going." Seeing how upset he was and remembering the noise we had heard, I did what he asked me to do. I assumed he had seen an animal, even though he refused to share what had happened to make him upset.

The men built up some brush and small pieces of wood and tried again and again to light it up with their lighters. The lighters absolutely refused to work, even though they had both been working perfectly just minutes before when they were lighting cigarettes in the car. The guys decided to turn off the headlights and just use a flashlight so the car battery wouldn't die. I was starting to get nervous and scared and I asked one of the guys to come over and stand with me. He came over and tried to light his lighter again and it just exploded with flames. The flames were about the size of his head and we both jumped back and he tossed he lighter on to the ground. For the few seconds that the flame was at eye level, we both saw the flash of a man's face standing next to us with his mouth wide open.

We were all scared beyond belief now, so we jumped into the car to leave. We all jumped into the front seat, me in the middle and the guys on either side of me. The guy who had gone out into the woods finally told us that he had seen a man out there just staring at him. Before one of the men could even start the car, we began hearing a rythmic drumming sound outside right next the car. It was slow at first, but it got faster and faster. On the other side of the car, on the path where we had driven there was a low green glowing effect. I've never seen anything like it in my entire life. It was just in certain spots, kind of like puddles. As if the drumming and the glowing weren't bad enough, I felt the most oppresive and hopeless feeling that I've ever felt right at that moment. The feeling was physical and emotional. We tried to leave because obviously we knew we were not wanted there, but it took a few tries for the car to start. One of the men remarked that the car had stalled in that clearing a few times during the daylight as well a few weeks before.

Once we were on our way we drove as fast as we could back to civilization, but the feelings of opressivness and hopelessness stayed with me for days. Everytime I think about this encounter I get chills and I even have nightmares about it sometimes. None of us have any idea what exactly it was that we experienced, but we have never gone back to that clearing since.

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