Exposition (semi-optional)
Every Christmas my Dad’s side of the family comes in town. On my Dad’s side of the family I have about 20 cousins including my four siblings. Of the 20 about half are close to my age, 19. We have bonded over the years through absurd activities that we do since there are 20 cousins and our family is not very wealthy.
One of greatest things we did was going to a week of Camp Hidden Hollow. This tradition started when I was as old as 10. I attended seven years of Camp Hidden Hollow alongside my cousins, and after that the oldest of us went on to be counselors at the camp for another three years. The camp was the absolute bare minimum required to be called a “camp” and that was what we loved about it. It was a day camp so you stayed for seven hours and then left. Every year we did the same camp activities and sang the same camp songs. Without the right attitude the camp was hellish in a way.
Now we have abandoned the tradition and within the past two years have taken up a new tradition of visiting the camp afterhours. Because we are all getting older and all of our parents are divorced our schedules do not line up as much anymore and we really only see each other at Christmas like I mentioned earlier.
Main section
The first time we went to Camp Hidden Hollow there was maybe six of us. It was nearly midnight and even though the camp grounds act as a year-round cabin resort we were still sort of trespassing. The entrance is a gravel road that leads to the main lodge area and then does a U-turn to circulate the cars back out the entrance on a second road slightly to the right of the entrance road. We made the U-turn and parked on the shoulder of the second road. The camp grounds are very bare-bones in terms of electrical equipment so it was completely dark. Besides some people having a camp fire off in the distance there was no one else in sight. We quietly made our way around the grounds, careful to not make too much noise since the owners of the camp and directors of the summer camp live on the grounds off deeper in the woods. The night was great, we walked the hiking trails and took pictures that turned out to be very unsettling. We left and were successful in never getting caught.
The second trip, this year, was different.
We never got caught or in trouble or anything like that, but we saw something that has been hard to explain. We found ourselves on the same gravel entrance with our headlights on low-beam. We made the same U-turn and parked in the same spot as the previous year. This time when we got out of the car there were only four of us, my oldest guy cousin and two of my younger brothers. It was freezing and combined with the nervousness of running into to the camp directors we were all shaking a little. Like most camps, Camp Hidden Hollow was around 45 minutes from any densely populated areas so if something happened it would be some time before we got help.
As we walked towards the main lodge, I had this uneasy feeling in my stomach that I rarely felt. Even one of my brothers’ who rarely gets nervous about these types of situations was feeling on edge. The camp was so dark and so quiet. There seemed to be no people currently staying on the grounds besides the camp directors. It was as if some predator was on the grounds with us and all the surrounding wildlife had fled.
We walked past the main lodge on its right side because on the left side we would have been within eye-sight of the house where the camp directors lived. We were walking down this paved road that led past the field where all of the sports-related activities were held behind the main lodge. The camp had Christmas decorations up all around and something about it was unnerving.
We had been walking, very on edge, for a few minutes when my cousin stopped and pointed across the field to a singular lamp post in the distance. The lamp post was probably about 150 yards away and was more of a tall wooden post with a single light sloppily built into it. It was the light post that my cousin had drawn our attention to because under the light stood the silhouette of a gangly, tall figure. It was hard to make out the details of the figure, but we joked about how it looked like Slenderman.
We were joking until it started moving. Then we all started to feel our stomachs’ falling as something was very obviously off about the figure. It was nearly half the size of the wooden post so it must have been about 10 feet tall. Initially, I did not think the figure was anything and was just a trick of the mind. However, now the figure seemed to show some defining features. Like I said it was tall. It also seemed to be shirtless and hairless with long legs and hands hanging down by its knees. The proportions of the figure were just off in addition to its height. It looked like a human that had been stretched out. The figure did seem to be wearing pants, but I could not make out any defining facial features at all. The figure was not facing completely towards us but in the direction of the camp’s lake.
The figure moved. As it did I felt myself starting to move back towards the direction of the car without much conscious thought about doing so. We were just all enthralled at the sight of this figure. It did not move much in terms of distance, but its limbs seemed to be twitching erratically. I thought I was going mad because the figure seemed to be getting smaller. It then stepped out completely from the light and when it came back into its orange hue, it had clearly changed into the recognizable figure of a man in a hoodie and jeans. He was facing our direction and we all looked at each other exclaiming “that is a person”. We ran straight back to the car and got out of there.
This happened two days ago and it very well could have just been a regular dude, but I figured I would share the experience and see if anyone found it interesting.