I never wanted to go to church camp. But my parents insisted it would be good for me. They said it would help me connect with God and make new friends. I didn’t care about either of those things. All I cared about was getting out of there alive.
The camp was called Kanakuk, and it was located on Tablerock Lake in Missouri. It looked like any other summer camp, with cabins and a mess hall, and a lake for swimming. But there was something off about the place, something that made my skin crawl.
Maybe it was the way everyone seemed so happy all the time, like they were all part of some secret club that I wasn’t allowed to join. Maybe it was the way they talked about God as if he were their best friend, their confidante, their savior. Maybe it was just me being paranoid.
But then again, maybe not.
It started on the first night of camp. We had just finished dinner and were heading back to our cabins when we heard a strange noise coming from the woods. It sounded like someone or something was moving through the trees, rustling leaves and snapping twigs.
At first, we thought it might be one of the counselors playing a prank on us, but then we saw her face – pale as death – peering out from behind a tree trunk.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered urgently.
We nodded mutely.
“It’s probably just an animal,” one of us said weakly.
But we all knew that wasn’t true.
The noise grew louder as whatever-it-was got closer to our cabin. We could hear its breathing now – ragged and heavy – as if it had been running for miles without stopping.
Then suddenly it stopped altogether, right outside our door.
We froze in terror as we waited for whatever-it-was to come bursting through the door at any moment. But it didn’t. Instead, we heard a soft tapping sound, like someone was trying to get our attention.
We looked at each other, unsure of what to do. Should we open the door and see who or what was out there? Or should we stay put and hope it would go away?
Before we could decide, the tapping stopped and we heard footsteps retreating back into the woods.
We never did find out what it was that night – whether it was a person or an animal or something else entirely. But that wasn’t the end of our troubles at Kanakuk.
Over the next few days, strange things started happening all around us. We would hear voices in the middle of the night, whispering secrets that we couldn’t quite make out. We would see shadows moving across our windows, even though there was no one outside.
And then there were the dreams.
Every night I would dream about something different – a dark figure climbing stairs in the forests, a faceless man watching me from behind a tree, a voice calling my name from somewhere far away.
At first, I thought they were just nightmares brought on by my anxiety about being at camp. But then I started hearing other kids talking about their own strange dreams – dreams that seemed too real to be mere figments of their imagination.
One girl told me she had dreamed about being chased through the woods by a siren with legs that sounded like her parents. Another boy said he had dreamed about drowning in Tablerock Lake while something pulled him down deeper and deeper into its murky depths.
And then there were those who didn’t talk about their dreams at all – those who seemed distant and distracted as if they were living in some other world altogether.
I tried to tell myself that it was all just a coincidence – that these things happened at every summer camp – but deep down I knew better. There was something sinister lurking beneath the surface of Kanakuk, something that was slowly but surely driving us all mad.
It wasn’t until the last night of camp that we finally found out what it was.
We were all gathered around the campfire, singing hymns and roasting marshmallows, when one of the counselors suddenly stood up and began to speak in a strange language that none of us could understand.
At first, we thought it was some kind of joke – a way to scare us before sending us back home. But then we saw the look on her face – the wild, desperate look that told us she wasn’t joking at all.
And then we heard it – a low rumbling sound coming from deep within the woods. It grew louder and louder until it was all we could hear, drowning out our screams and cries for help.
And then suddenly everything went quiet again as if nothing had ever happened.
We never did find out what caused that noise or what made our counselor speak in tongues. But I knew one thing for sure: I would never go back to Kanakuk again. Not after what I had seen and heard there.
God, I hate church camp.