Camp Counselor

The Camp Counselor is a creepy campfire tale written by a user on this website named Pete LeBrun in collaboration with ScaryForKids.

Now gather around campers and I’ll tell you a tale. One of blood and gore and fear and fright and things that lurk in the dead of the night.

I’ve worked as a counselor in this summer camp for years and I’ve seen kids come and go. I’ve seen a lot of things you probably wish you’d never have to see.

There was once a counselor here at this summer camp that wasn’t such a nice guy. In fact, he was was about as mean and nasty as they come. He was violent and vicious and acted like an army drill sergeant. He worked the campers extremely hard and set impossible tasks for them to do. It was obvious that he derived a huge amount of enjoyment from making others suffer.

Every day he would ring the bell to wake the campers a full two hours before they were actually supposed to get up. Then, he would march them out of their cabins and make them run around the camp until they dropped to their knees in exhaustion. When they protested, he slapped their faces and called them degrading names. When he decided they had endured enough of that, he would drag them into the woods and force them do various exercises.

Some kids had to do push-ups in the mud. The counselor would stand on their backs and push their faces down in the muck. Others were ordered to do pull-ups on high tree branches. The counselor would grab their legs and pull down with his full weight, straining their arms and making them lose their grip and fall to the ground. As if that wasn’t enough, he would often punch and kick them and tell them it was their punishment for being lazy.

As the kids lay on the forest floor, writhing in pain or nursing their wounds, the evil counselor would just stand there and laugh. He seemed to have so much fun abusing and humiliating kids. He was misusing his power over the campers, but he didn’t care. He was having the time of his life.

A rumor began to spread around the camp that the counselor was actually insane. One boy claimed he had heard a story about the counselor from his older brother. He swore it was true. At night, around the campfire, he told the others the twisted tale he had heard.

Apparently the counselor had attended the same summer camp when he himself was just a boy. At that time, he was a shy and introverted ten-year old and he had a fear of pretty much everything. His father beat him regularly and told him every day that he was a weakling and a sissy. His father was a tough military man and he was embarrassed by his shy and retiring son.

The counselor’s father wanted him to “man up” so he sent him to camp every summer. When he graduated from high school, his father began sending him to boot camp. Later on, the counselor was forced to join the military, to follow in the footsteps of his father. It was his experience in the military that unhinged his mind and caused his sadistic behavior.

While serving in Afghanistan, the counsellor was abducted by terrorists and smuggled across the border into Pakistan. There, in a secret location, the counselor was tortured for months and months until he was near death. Eventually he was rescued by a team of Navy SEALs and transported back to a US base in Afghanistan. However The terrorists inflicted such abominable tortures on him that it permanently changed him. People said that he lost his mind and the military gave him an honorable discharge.

Back in America, he found it impossible to adjust to civillian life. He couldn’t hold a job because of his vicious temper and his violent behavior. The only work he could find was as a counselor in a summer camp. The same summer camp he had been forced to attend as a child.

The owner of the summer camp didn’t see it as a problem. He thought that it was good for the kids to be getting so much discipline and exercise. In fact, that was why he had hired the counselor. Parents sent their kids to his camp in order to toughen them up.

However as time went by the crazed camp counselor became more and more abusive towards the campers, both verbally and physically. The owner had no proof so he couldn’t do anything about it. As far as he was concerned, as long as the kids had no permanent or fatal injuries, the counselor could do as he pleased.

The campers quickly became more and more frightened of the counselor. If anyone dared to complain about him, he would grab a stick or a tree branch and beat them with it until they were black and blue. He was becoming more violent by the day and many campers feared for their lives.

At night, before they went to sleep, he threatened them, saying that if they exposed his abuse, he would make sure they went on a long hike and never returned. When they wrote letters home to their parents, the camp counselor insisted on reading them and censoring anything he thought might give him a bad reputation. The kids and teenagers were forced to write letters singing the praises of the summer camp.

Eventually, the older kids decided that enough was enough. They were teenagers and they had to do something to protect the younger ones. They hoped they could scare the counselor into leaving.

One day, they were scheduled to go on a long hike. When the counselor wasn’t looking, they swiped his backpack. Then they gathered up all of the insects, reptiles and creepy crawlies they could find and stuffed them into the backpack. After zipping it up, they replaced the backpack and the camp counselor never noticed a thing.

The hike lasted for three hours and when they reached the edge of a cliff, the counselor allowed them to stop for a short break. Mopping his brow, he reached into his backpack for a bottle of water. The minute he unzipped the packpack, a horde of snakes, spiders, worms, cockroaches and slugs came pouring out. They crawled up his arm and within seconds, his face and upper body was covered in insects and snakes.

The shocked counselor screamed and began swatting at his arms and face, trying to get rid of the creepy crawlies. In his struggle, he took a few steps backwards and lost his footing. As the horrified kids looked on, he toppled over the edge of the cliff and disappeared from view. They heard a long agonized scream, followed by a sickening thud.

Rushing to the cliff edge, the campers looked down. It was at least a hundred foot drop and there was no way to get down safely. Assuming that the counselor must be dead, they made their way back to camp. It was a long hike, and on the way, they decided to get their stories straight. They decided that they wouldn’t mention anything about the prank that caused the counselor’s accident. The teenagers didn’t want to get into trouble, so they swore the younger kids to silence.

When they finally returned to camp, they went straight into the office of the owner and told him their version of what had happened. They claimed that the camp counselor had simply tripped and fallen over the edge of the cliff. The owner was horrified and immediately organized a search party, but after combing the bottom of the ravine for the entire night, no trace of the counselor was found.

The next day, the campers stayed in the grounds of the summer camp. The atmosphere was somber and nobody wanted to talk about what had happened. The teenagers reminded the younger kids to keep their mouths shut and threatened them to make sure they kept quiet.

As night fell, the campers found a spot near the woods and built a campfire. Then, they sat around the flames on logs, roasting marshmallows and singing campfire songs to lighten the mood. Gradually, the younger kids got tired and went off to bed, leaving only the teenagers still awake.

There were ten campers sitting around the fire, five girls and five boys. A red-haired girl got up and said she was going to drop by the camp’s office to ask the owner if there was any news. The other teens watched her silently as she walked back towards the main buildings.

All of a sudden, they heard a faint voice whispering on the breeze. They weren’t sure if it was real or just their imagination. It sounded like a man’s voice softly singing:

“One little, two little, three little teenagers.
Four little, five little, six little teenagers.
Seven little, eight little, nine little teenagers.
All about to die.”

At first they thought it might be another camper playing a prank on them. The singing grew louder and more sinister. It seemed to travel around, through the trees, surrounding them and boxing them in.

“One little, two little, three little teenagers.
Four little, five little, six little teenagers.
Seven little, eight little, nine little teenagers.
All about to die.”

As the singing reached a crescendo, the teenagers started to panic. They ran back to camp and headed for the owner’s office. As soon as they burst through the door, they saw a girl kneeling on the floor, her hands covering her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” shouted one of the boys.

The girl didn’t answer. She just pointed towards the office desk. The others cautiously walked over to the desk and peered behind it. The body of the owner was lying slumped against the wall. His shirt was covered in blood and his head was missing.

Screaming in terror, the teenagers locked the office door and barricaded it with whatever furniture they could find. Within seconds, they heard someone pounding on the other side of the door. Then, they heard a voice outside singing:

“One little, two little, three little teenagers.
Four little, five little, six little teenagers.
Seven little, eight little, nine little teenagers.
All about to die.”

There was no doubt in their minds. They knew in their bones that the unhinged camp counselor had returned seeking revenge. If he managed to gain entry to the office, he would surely kill them all. One girl, thinking quickly, grabbed the office phone and called the police. As tears streamed down her face, she told the police dispatcher that they were under attack and begged them to send officers as soon as possible. The dispatcher assured her that the police were on their way and asked her to remain calm.

Then they heard the dull thud, thud, thud of an axe chopping away at the other side of the heavy wooden door. The teenagers huddled together, crying and trembling as they listened to the person on the other side of the door laughing like a maniac. They prayed that help would arrive soon.

The unseen attacker scrambled up the wall and climbed onto the roof of the office. The hacking sounds of the axe blows began again, this time on the ceiling. He was trying to gain access to the room any way he could. With each heavy thud, pieces of the flimsy ceiling gave way and fell to the ground.

Minutes went by, but they seemed like hours. Finally, they heard a police siren approaching and the sound of a car skidding to a halt on the gravel driveway outside. After a few tense moments, there was a volley of gunshots and the campers dived to the floor to take cover. They heard a heavy thud on the roof above them, followed by more gunshots. Then, there was an eerie silence.

They heard a calm voice on the other side of the door saying, “We’ve got the place surrounded. The man with the axe is dead. Come out in single file.”

The teenagers breathed a sigh of relief, realizing they had managed to survive the onslaught. They pulled the furniture away from the door, eager to get out of the office. One by one, they opened the door and stepped slowly out into the night, until finally only one teenage camper was left in the office building.

It was the red-haired girl. She was still too terrified to move a muscle. Cowering on the floor, she listened intently, waiting for some sign that the coast was clear. She couldn’t hear anything.

For almost an hour, she knelt in the corner, by the desk, inches from the headless body of the owner. She desperately wanted to escape, but her fear kept her rooted to the spot.

Eventually, she worked up the courage to take a peep outside. The girl crawled across the floor and slowly opened the door, just a crack. Her hand flew to her mouth and she tried to stop herself from screaming out loud.

In the cold, pale light of the porch lamp, she saw something that filled her with unimaginable horror. The grass outside was covered in chunks of raw, red meat. When she looked closer, she realized that it wasn’t meat, it was the hacked-up remains of the other teenagers.

Fingers and toes lay strewn across the porch. Pieces of legs, parts of arms and chunks of flesh were piled here and there. She looked over to the right and saw a police car, it’s lights still flashing. Everything was silent. Two dead policemen lay sprawled beside the car, their hands still clutching their guns. Stacked on the roof of the car were the severed heads of the nine unfortunate campers. A trail of bloody footprints led off into the trees.

In the morning, more policemen arrived and found the scene of carnage at the summer camp. The red-haired girl was still hiding in the office and when they reached her, she was barely able to speak. The younger kids had spent the night safely in their cabins and the police led them out and ushered them onto buses. They tried to make sure they didn’t see the body parts strewn about the office building. The kids were sent home to their parents and only then did they find out the true extent of what had happened that bloody night.

The counselor was never caught. The newspapers dubbed him “The Mad Axeman”. He was rumored to be still on the loose in the woods. Despite many searches conducted by the state police and the FBI, no trace of him was ever found.

Well, campers, we have come to the end of my tale. They say the camp counselor still roams these woods looking for more victims. Before we put out the fire tonight, why don’t we sing a campfire song? Why don’t we sing my favorite campfire song. While I take out my axe, why don’t we sing:

“One little, two little, three little teenagers.
Four little, five little, six little teenagers.
Seven little, eight little, nine little teenagers.
All about to die.”