Camp Stories

Scary camp stories to tell your friends. Every summer camp has a ghost story or an urban legend that counselors love to tell around the campfire.

Old Man Clutch at Camp Schmidt

Old Man Clutch is a scary story from Camp Schmidt in Prince George’s County, Maryland. According to the legend, the camp was built on an old plantation owned by the Clutch family. Old Man Clutch used to grow tobacco. He was mean and cranky and had an extremely disfigured left leg that caused him to limp. He also had 7 children, but two of them died and their gravestones are there at the camp. They say the headless ghost of Old Man Clutch still haunts the camp. He kidnaps and decapitates children who stray into the woods nearby and carries their severed heads in a bag.

“When I went to Camp Schmidt 14 years ago, I heard the legends about the ghost, but I really didnt believe in them. One night, when the counelors left us alone in our bunks, we decided to sneak out into the woods. There were six of us – 4 girls and 2 boys. Taking our flashlights, we went a deep into the woods. Everything was eerily quiet. We were laughing and joking, but suddenly we heard a loud noise. It was like a dragging sound. In the darkness, we could make out the shape of a man walking toward us. He seemed to have a bad limp and he was holding something in his hand and dragging it along behind him. It was too dark to see, but as he came closer, we realized that he didn’t have a head. We all screamed and began running away. He was following us and all I could hear behind me was the sound of my friends screaming and crying in terror. When we eventually made it back to the counselors’ cabin, one of the girls in our group was missing. We told the counselors what happened and they organized a search, but the girl was never found. The next morning, her bracelet was discovered lying in front of the cabin. They say Old Man Clutch still wanders those woods near Camp Schmidt waiting for his next victim.”

Headless Hattie

Headless Hattie is a ghost that haunts camps in Ohio. Hattie was an old woman who lived in a house on the hill. The townsfolk suspected she was a witch. One night, four men went up to her house and dragged her out. They took her down to the railroad and tied her to the tracks. They heard a loud whistle in the distance and the tracks began to rumble. As the train headlights fell on Hattie, she let out a blood-curdling scream. As the train thundered past, its wheels sliced off her head.

The men hid her body in a hollow tree and they tossed her head into a flooded pit. Not long afterwards, strange things began happeneing around the town and people were afraid to leave their houses at night. One morning, they found the door of a man’s home broken in and he had disappeared. A few days later, they found his mangled body on the train tracks. He was one of the men who had murdered Hattie.

Every year, one of the men who had killed Hattie would be found dead under mysterious circumstances. Today, the town no longer exists, but they say Headless Hattie still haunts the area and every year some unsuspecting camper is carried off and beheaded. According to the legend, she appears on nights when there is a full moon, riding on a horse, carrying a scythe and wearing a belt around her waist with the heads of her victims hanging from it.

Anson Miner at Camp White Pine

Anson Miner is a scary story from Camp White Pine in XXXXX. According to the legend, a farmer named Anson Miner owned some land beside the camp. One day, his tractor broke down and as he was trying to repair it, the engine suddenly sprang to life. His leg was sucked into the thresher and injured so badly that it had to be amputated. Anson Miner survived the grisly incident, but it left him with a wooden leg and a terrible limp. Unable to do much work, he fell into dire financial straits and lost his beloved farm. He carried his lantern into the barn, climbed up a ladder and hung himself from the rafters. The sheriff discovered his lifeless body dangling in the greenish glow of the lantern. After he cut the corpse down, the sheriff went back to his car to report the news to his station. When he returned to the barn, he was shocked to find that the body and the lantern had completely disappeared. Ever since then, they say his ghost haunts the camp and a strange green glow can be seen late at night. Curious campers who dare to venture into the woods at night often hear a low, ominous “stomp-stomp-drag” sound. Then they see the limping, moaning ghost of Anson Miner emerge from the trees.

Seaweed Sally

“Seaweed Sally” is a ghost that haunts a summer camp. Years ago, she was a camper who went canoeing in the lake with a friend. Sally couldn’t swim and her friend started goofing off and shaking the boat to scare her. Sally freaked out, stood up and screamed. The boat tipped over and Sally fell out. She disappeared under the water and was never seen again. The camp counsellors presumed she drowned. Even after they drained the lake they never found her remains. The morning after the accident, Sally’s friend was woken up by something dripping on her face. When she opened her eyes, she saw wet seaweed hanging from the bunk above her and a trail of wet footprints on the ground.

Camp Windigo

The legend of Camp Windigo involves a female camp counselor who went crazy. Unable to control herself in her madness, she hung three girls in a barn on the property and drowned three more in a bathtub. Then she went and killed herself. They say the ghosts of the six little girls and the crazy woman now haunt the camp. Some brave people go to the abandoned and dilapitated farmhouse at Camp Windigo to see for themselves if there are any ghosts. Most of them never manage to stay the night because they see the shadowy figures of ghostly young girls running around the camp. Many people also heard strange noises and experienced supernatural events. They say they have seen child-size hand prints appearing inexplicably on windows and heard the disembodied voices of children crying. One psychic claims to have “made contact” with the spirits of the six murdered girls.

Camp Kiwanee

There’s a scary story about a girl named Alice. Her uncle was the one who lived in the lodge. She was going to marry the town doctor, but on her wedding day, she was found hung in her room. They think it was one of the workers at the lodge (some sort of housekeeper) who did it. Supposedly, he loved Alice and was jealous that she was going to marry the doctor. On the day of her wedding, he confronted her and told her he loved her. When she said she didn’t love him, he strangled her and hung her from the ceiling. The worker disappeared after that. Some say he committed suicide by jumping out the window of the lodge and falling into the lake. Others say that when Alice didn’t show up at the church, the people went up to the lodge to look for her. The worker tried to escape by jumping out the window but he fell into the lake and drowned. However, his body was never found. Years later, a boy was swimming there and his foot got caught in something. It turned out to be a rib cage. The bones were about the size that would fit the worker, but there was no real proof they were his remains. So now people claim that Alice’s ghost haunts her old room in the lodge. The door is kept boarded up, but if you go up there, you can see the rocking chair moving on its own and you can also hear screaming.

“I went to Camp Kiwanee every summer and there were stories about girls being murdered by the mental hospital escapees, guys at a camp across the lake and the guys that worked in the kitchen and their bodies were found in the Carnberry Bogs behind the camp. At night the counselors would all go up to the lodge to hang out and leave us in those cabins until the wee hours. I was only 8 years old and I used to lay awake scared to death until my counselors would return (like they would save us from the murderers).”

Mad Molly

Mad Molly was a campfire story about a crazy girl named Molly. She killed a cat by tearing it to bits and was sent to an insane asylum. However, there was a fire in the 1950s and she was in it. She was never found after the fire was put out. Then she came back to terrorize the camp.

Short Arm

Short Arm is a one armed hermit who claws at the screens of cabins, trying to get in and abduct campers. They say he is a ghoul and murders campers so he can eat their flesh.

Moana

Moana is a ghost that haunts Lutheran Memorial Camp in Ohio. She was an unfortunate woman who lost her eyeballs in a tragic accident. now, she prowls the camp, trying to gouge out the eyes of unsuspecting campers and announcing her arrival with drawn-out wails of “MOOOOOOAAAAAANNNNNNAAAAAA!

Dr Magnuson

This is a story told in some summer camps. Dr. Magnuson lived in a lonely house nestled among the evergreens about a mile across the lake. Overzealous Mounties murdered his young son William, but the doctor managed to salvage the boy’s corpse and brought Little Willie back to life. However, Dr. Magnuson’s rejuvenation experiment went horribly wrong.