“I bought a EMF Reader and a black light! They should be delivered on Monday.” -Dane texted in our chat group with me and my husband.
“Hell yeah! I bought a few things for the trip, too. LED lights and tarp poles so we can put the tarp up in case it rains.” I reply. “What time will you get off work Tuesday? I feel like it’ll be around 5 for me. Hopefully still enough time to get there before it gets dark”.
“I only work a few hours that day. I plan on packing the rest of my stuff when I get back home.” Dane sent.
“I think I can get off work early too. We need to pack the cooler.” – Zack sent.
“Sweet. I’m so excited! The campgrounds look cool as shit!” I text back.
A few weeks ago my best friend, Dane, sent me a link to a supposedly haunted campground that was only a couple hours from our house. We hadn’t been camping with Dane in a long while and I knew how much he wanted to go again. I reserved the camp site only a week after he sent it, and solidified plans at work for us all to be off at the same time. It’s difficult for us all to be off work at the same time due to us all working at the same hotel.
Dane and I really bonded over our love of horror a couple of years ago. We watch horror movies and play horror based video games on a regular basis. We’d dragged my husband to a “haunted” cemetery in 2020. My husband isn’t the biggest fan of horror but he loves camping so he was on board for the trip to the campground. I don’t actually believe in ghosts but I love the adrenaline rush of being in a spooky area. My husband, Zack, 100% believes in ghosts. His mom used to take him to haunted places when he was young and he swears he’s seen ghosts on multiple occasions. We didn’t see anything in the cemetery and I didn’t think we’d see anything this time either.
The campground is on the coast of Washington, about two hours away from Seattle. It’s an old fort used back in the early 20th century located in a state park. Our plan was to leave right after I got off work and head up with our dog, Shiloh, to do a two day camping trip.
I got off work later than I expected due to how busy the hotel was, so it was almost dark when we arrived at the camp site. We got the tent up in the minimal light and in record time. While I was airing up our mattresses, Zack started on making a fire. Dane surprised us by saying he brought magic fire packets. When we all settled by the fire he whipped out a packet and threw it on the fire. The flames turned from yellow and orange to purple and blue. We drank our beers and watched the fire, throwing more packets on when the flames went back to their normal colors. We drank and laughed until after midnight. We were drunk by the time we headed to the tent to sleep. Zack and I were on one air mattress with Shiloh and Dane was on his own. We were still goofing off in the tent when we heard a commotion outside. Zack was almost asleep but Dane and I got really quiet. Shiloh started growling. We had left a tarp on the table and it sounded like something was moving it. We heard crunching and movement on the tarp. Shiloh’s growls turned into low barks.
I found out that drunk me was the stupid one in the movies that just charges out in dangerous situations. I unzipped the tent and ran out towards the table. I couldn’t see anything. The LED lights I had bought didn’t illuminate much. I walked over to the table and saw chips everywhere.
“Oh my God. Zack, you left your chips out. It looks like raccoons got into them. The bag is even gone!” I started laughing. I took my phone out and took pictures of the mess the raccoons had made to show Zack and Dane in the morning. I went back to the tent and zipped it back up. I could still hear crunching as I fell asleep.
The next morning, we all got up around 10am. I looked at where the chips were and there was zero evidence the chip massacre had even happened. Not even a single crumb was left.
“That was a very skilled racoon. It left absolutely nothing behind!” I said. “If it wasn’t for my picture, you wouldn’t even know anything had happened!
“It’s like they were waiting behind the trees for us to go to sleep.” Zack laughed. “Sneaky bastards.”
Dane and I went to the store that was a few miles away to get food for us while Zack stayed with Shiloh. We got more beer, stuff to make lunch and breakfast for the next day, and things for our hike to the fort.
We were drinking again by 11am with our lunch. After we finished our sandwiches, we started packing a backpack with things we’d need for the hike. Dane put in his EMF reader and black light, we packed a few beers, and some water for us and Shiloh. I threw in her small bowl also. Dane had been studying the map of the park during the drive and knew it well enough that he could point us in the correct direction with ease.
The fort was about a mile from our site, mostly uphill at first. We took turns on holding the backpack. Hid our beers from other hikers and threw our empties in the bag. We got to the fort about a half hour into our walk. Dane ran forward ahead of us and disappeared up some steps. Zack had Shiloh and stopped for her to pee. I walked to the spot where Dane went and couldn’t find him. It was a stone platform with walls. There was one disconnected short wall about waist height a few feet long.
I yelled for Dane but he didn’t respond. I moved forward to see if he was maybe hiding behind the wall to scare me. When I went around the wall I found stairs down. It was very dark so I couldn’t see anything past the last few steps. I hear chuckling and Dane comes around the corner at the bottom of the steps.
“Ha I got you!” He yelled.
I roll my eyes and follow him back down the stairs to a long, dark hallway.
“This is so cool!!” I say. I got my phone out and started recording. He must’ve taken the EMF reader out of the bag earlier because he pulls it from his pocket and turns it on. We move forward and see there are doors on the right side of the hallway. The doors are metal and very rusted.
“Hopefully we’ve all had a tetanus shot recently!” I say. Dane goes into the first room, carefully avoiding the door and I follow with my phone video recording.
“Kurt Was Here” is written in black graffiti on the wall to our right. The rest of the walls are covered in dirt and grime. Dane says loudly “Are there any ghosts here with us?” while waving the EMF reader around. We don’t hear any response. We move towards the next room, which is a tighter squeeze through the door.
“You first”, I say. He doesn’t move so I say, “Okay, I’ll go first.” And I go through the narrow doors to find more graffiti and dirt.
We hear Shiloh’s nails on the ground down the hallway.
“Zack! We’re over here!” We both go back through the door and see Zack at the entrance with Shiloh.
“This is creepy!” Zack yells back. I see he pulls the backpack around and pulls out the black light. The illumination from the light is powerful. We follow Zack back into the first room and see more graffiti that the black light picks up. We move back down the hallway with Dane randomly saying “are there any ghosts in here” with no results from the EMF reader.
We all go up the stairs at the other side of the hallway and end up back on another stone platform that is identical to the other. We move around to the next entrance and find another hallway just like the first. There are more rusted doors, more graffiti, and more dirt.
This goes on for about an hour as we go down a few more hallways that are all mostly the same. Dane has run out of beer and I’m on my second to last. We’re outside again looking at another building when Zack starts going down narrow hallway about two feet wide. None of the other buildings have this hallway and so far they’ve been very similar in structure. I hesitate at first but follow after Zack. He has the black light and I follow with Shiloh and Dane behind me. We go about ten feet and there is a sharp left turn. Shiloh refuses to move forward. I try to coax her forward but she won’t budge. I look up and see Zack has disappeared around another turn. Dane says “Dude, what the fuck is this hallway?” behind me. Shiloh still refuses to go so I pick her up and start down the hallway. Dane sounds like he’s really enjoying himself and repeats “are there any ghosts in here?” multiple times.
I don’t even see the black light anymore. My stomach starts to ache with anxiety and Shiloh is shaking a little in my arms. I walk a few more steps forward and twist my ankle on a dip on the side of the hallway. I cry out in pain and fall down slightly with Shiloh still in my arms. I stand back up and see a very thin figure in front of me. It’s standing at the end of the hallway looking right at me. It has extremely long arms that goes down to it’s knees. It looks emaciated. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I couldn’t even scream. I blink and it’s gone. My breathing gets heavier and Shiloh starts to growl. I turn around to see if Dane had seen it too to find that no one was behind me. I hold Shiloh closer to my chest.
“Dane? Zack? Where are you guys?” I scream and it echoes around me. I could hear the fear in my voice. I start to violently shake and head back towards the entrance. I turn the corner to find…. more darkness. The entrance was right there. Right there! I think. I can feel tears prickle my eyes. I turn around again to see if maybe I can find Zack back down the other way.
“Zack! Dane!” I scream again. A tear falls down my cheek. I move towards the hallway I had seen the creature due to not knowing what could be down the other way. The hallway that shouldn’t exist! I think to myself. I whisper Zack’s name this time. I move closer and closer to the corner. My phone has a tiny bit of charge left on it due to me filming most of the last hour. I pull my phone from my pocket, trying to juggle it and holding my shaking dog. My hand is vibrating with fear but I manage to turn the flash light app on. I peek around the corner and again see nothing but the same hallway. I move my way down the hallway and hear a screech from behind me. I scream and turn around to see what looks like Dane but he’s… wrong. His eyes are two different sizes, his legs are too long, his torso is too short. One are is longer than the other. His clothes are covered in dark patches and are ripped in places.
“Dane…?” I whisper. He looks up at me and his mouth opens wide. Too wide. His jaw drops down to his chest and his mouth somehow stays intact. He screams so loud I feel vibrations. He starts to charge towards me so I run the other way. I can feel tears pouring from my eyes and I run around several corners, while holding a whimpering Shiloh. I look over my shoulder to see he’s gone. I slow down but run around a few more corners. I slump to the floor and hug Shiloh trying to calm myself. I’m breathing heavy from fear and exhaustion.
I hear a soft moaning from the hallway ahead of me. The hallway I haven’t been down yet. The moaning gets louder like the thing that is making the noise is moving closer. I get up and move back down the hallway away from the noise while holding my flashlight towards it. In the light, I see small movement towards the top. While still moving back, I see what looks to be Zack’s face appear. His face is long, like two feet long. And narrow. His eyes are like saucers. His head is nearly touching the ceiling.
I scream loud and run in the other direction. I don’t feel like my heart can take much more of this terror. I run down several hallways, around several sharp turns and see sunlight. The entrance! I think with tears still streaming down my face. I fall out of the hallway and onto the open stone of the platform floor. It must’ve been raining a while because the ground is wet. I stand up and put Shiloh on the ground. I still hear an echoing moaning from inside the hallway so I run. I run until I see two hikers and yell at them to call the police. They try but they don’t have cell reception. My phone is dead. The couple escorted me back to my campsite and called the police as soon as they got service.
The police didn’t believe my story. Of course, they didn’t. They said I’d been drunk and hallucinated the whole thing. They filed a missing person report for both Zack and Dane. It’s been two months since that trip. I’ve lost my two best friends. I’ve tried to cope with all of this but it’s hard. I see a therapist once a week. I’ve been struggling at work, but thankfully the company has given me leniency due to my loss. I don’t know how much longer they’ll allow this though.
I never want to go camping again. I never want to go into national parks again. I never want to go anywhere remotely haunted again.