ghost stories and nostalgia about a place I grew up on
okay so this one’s weird because everyone at camp knew it. like, even the new kids on the first day. it was just… a thing.
they said if you sat by the lake at night and looked out across the water, sometimes you’d see this kid. standing on the little island. barely visible. waving. just standing there. waving like an idiot.
people said his name was william. idk if that’s even real or just what the story calls him. depending who you ask, he was playing hide and seek and got in a canoe and drifted off. or he wanted to run away. or he was just dumb and untied it for fun. i don’t think he could swim.
they say they found the canoe days later. just floating there. no kid inside.
and here's the thing — sometimes a canoe just goes missing for a day or two. not like, "someone borrowed it" missing. more like “it was tied up and then it wasn’t.” it always comes back. never damaged. sometimes with a kid’s shoe in it. sometimes with water inside, but the lake was calm that day.
some kids swear if you wave back, you end up having weird dreams. about drowning. or fire. or stuff i’m not gonna write here.
i used to laugh it off, but i saw something once. summer of ‘04. i was out late. saw someone on the island. waving. and no one believed me. lol. still don’t.
you know how every camp has that one story that makes zero sense but somehow feels like it *has* to be true?
at bellroot, it was the scissors in the ceiling.
there was this girl — camila. super quiet. kinda nerdy. lived in the craft room making little origami foxes and friendship bracelets while the rest of us were out playing games or swimming or whatever. she didn’t talk much. mostly just… existed. you barely noticed her until you realized you hadn't seen her in a while.
then suddenly she was just… gone. we were told she left camp early. the way they always say it when something’s off. no one made a big deal. except the stories started spreading.
they say she went back to the craft room during lunch. slipped on the tile. cracked her head on the edge of a table. scissors fell from the top and stabbed her in the neck. she tried to crawl to the door. didn’t make it.
and yeah, it sounds fake. until you go into the craft room and look up.
there's a pair of rusted scissors stuck in the ceiling beam. stuck. like… embedded. maintenance tried to get them out once. a counselor tried too. nothing. they’re just there. frozen. like they don’t wanna come down.
and if you’re ever in there alone — like alone-alone — some people swear something drips from the ceiling. not water. not paint. something darker. but it’s never there when you check.
also the cabinet under the sink opens by itself. always around 2:17pm. we stopped closing it.
just... don’t stay in there alone too long.
this one always messed me up tbh. not because it’s the scariest — but because it’s so easy to imagine. like it could’ve been *anyone.*
her name was sophia. blonde girl, braces, always smelled like vanilla lotion. she was one of those kids who *loved* horses. not like, “oh that’s cute” — more like she knew all their names, their favorite snacks, and probably which one had anxiety.
anyway, one night she snuck out. rumor was she had a crush on a counselor or something and had been hanging around the stables after hours. nobody noticed she was gone until morning.
what they say happened is this: she was trying to hide when someone walked by — a counselor doing late checks or whatever — and she dove into a big pile of hay in the back corner. just stayed super still. waited.
except… that night, one of the horses decided that same pile was comfy enough to lie down on.
yeah. she suffocated. crushed under a 900-pound animal while no one even knew she was there.
some say the horse freaked out in the middle of the night for no reason and couldn’t be calmed down after. no one made the connection until it was way too late.
since then, the back-left corner of the stables is kinda… cursed? like no matter how much hay you move around, the pile always seems to reshape itself. some campers swear they hear breathing or quiet crying when they pass by at night.
one kid said they sat in that hay pile on a dare and felt something shift underneath them. not the horse. something *else.*
also — not saying it’s real, but every single horse avoids that corner now. they won’t even look at it.
okay. look. i don’t even like writing this one.
some stories are just sad. some are creepy. this one is just... *wrong.*
so the way it goes, years ago there was this kid — gustavo. late-night snacker. kind of a little gremlin. always sneaking cookies from the staff lounge or raiding the pantry when everyone else was asleep. you know the type.
one night he slipped away from his cabin and went into the old kitchen. not the main cafeteria — this was the old one, behind the mess hall, the one they only used during storms or when something broke.
apparently he was trying to get into the freezer. nobody knows exactly what happened, but the story goes he tripped. or slipped. or leaned too far forward trying to reach something on the back shelf. and he fell into the meat grinder.
yeah.
they didn’t even find him for two days. only reason anyone figured it out was because the drain clogged. and the meat they served that week…
okay i know how this sounds. but every single camper that was there that summer says the same thing: the meatloaf on thursday was off.
not spoiled. not rotten. just... wrong. the texture. the smell. the way it sat in your mouth like it wanted to crawl back out.
since then, there’s been this thing. every time meatloaf’s on the menu, at least one kid makes a joke about gustavo. *“guess we’re having camper casserole”* or whatever. even the counselors join in.
but the thing is? the joke’s been around longer than any of them. way longer.
and no one remembers when they stopped using the old kitchen. or who locked it up. or why the lock is always scratched from the inside.
meatloaf night’s tomorrow. pass.
okay. not a lot of campers know this one. probably because most of them never go near the boiler room.
but if you’ve ever been there — like, *actually* been inside — you know the story. or at least part of it.
so this girl, louise. real artsy. real dramatic. she liked wandering off. skipping archery to write poems by the pool, sneaking into weird places to sit alone. kinda weird, kinda cool. definitely not the group activity type.
anyway, rumor says she was hanging around near the old utility hallway after swim class. met up with a guy she liked. maybe kissed him? no one’s totally sure. but she stayed behind when he left to go to afternoon rec.
thing is, the boiler room had some kind of chemical leak that summer. cleaning stuff spilled or got mixed — something like that. the fumes were nasty. real toxic if you stayed in there too long.
louise didn’t know that. she was still inside. door shut. no windows.
they think the fumes got to her fast. dizzy. sick. probably tried to leave but couldn’t walk straight. they say she tried to lean on one of the lockers for support.
and that’s when it slammed shut. on its own. locker #29.
she died in there. slow. suffocating on whatever was in the air.
they never reopened that locker. couldn’t. not for lack of trying. bolt cutters didn’t work. the door won’t budge. it’s just… sealed. welded by fate or some crap like that.
but the handprint’s still there. right in the middle of the door. like she reached out in her last seconds. no one ever cleaned it off. or maybe they did, and it came back.
and here’s the weirdest part — the room always smells like bleach. always. even though they haven’t stored chemicals there in decades.
i stood in that room once when i was on janitorial detail. dead silent. warm. smelled like hospital and metal. and then… locker 29 creaked. just once. just a little. like it remembered.
never went back.
the pool always felt wrong in the morning. too quiet. too blue. like it was waiting.
so the story goes, there was this kid — liam. pretty normal. swimmer. one of those kids who actually tried during camp activities instead of just faking a leg cramp to sit out. early riser, too. first one at practice, last one out.
he came down to the pool early one morning. coach hadn’t shown up yet. campers weren’t supposed to be there alone but... you know how it is. rules don’t stop overachievers.
they say he was practicing dives. that he slipped. or maybe the board was wet. maybe he jumped wrong. doesn’t matter. what matters is — he hit the edge of the board. right in the head. knocked him out cold before he even touched the water.
no one saw. no one came. he just... sank.
they didn’t even notice until roll call. by the time they pulled him out, it was too late.
now here's the part people whisper about:
sometimes, if you’re the first one on the diving board in the morning — you’ll see it.
just as you’re about to jump, look down at the water. for a second — just a second — there’s another splash already there. like someone dove in right before you. but there’s no sound. no ripples. just a ghost of motion in the pool.
some kids say you see him. liam. floating. waiting.
and then he’s gone.
weirdest part? no one’s ever cleaned that board. it’s got this faint rusty smear near the end. they said it’s from shoes. but i’ve never seen it on anyone else's.
also... the puddles. sometimes you come in and they’re already there. like someone’s been dripping wet. walking barefoot. but no one’s used the pool yet.
i was on morning swim once. saw it myself. looked down — splash. looked up — nothing. didn’t go in that day.
good call, honestly.
so i don’t usually write about the music room stories because they always felt kinda tame compared to the other stuff. but carrie’s is different.
she was one of those talented kids. the kind who already knew how to play full songs while the rest of us were still figuring out “hot cross buns.” played piano like she was born doing it. you’d hear her practicing before breakfast, sometimes even after lights out. real quiet. real focused.
story goes she was alone in the music room one day. working on a piece. something classical — or maybe something she wrote herself. no one’s sure anymore. it was hot, she had the door cracked, and apparently the archery range was active nearby.
and then… boom.
stray arrow. fired way too high. way too wide. it went through the cracked window. hit her in the back while she was still playing.
she bled out right there, slumped over the keys.
but here’s the part that stuck: the last three notes of whatever she was playing never got finished. fingers stopped just before them. and now? that section of the piano doesn’t work. keys are fine. strings are fine. sound just won’t come out.
but sometimes... late at night, people say you hear those last three notes.
soft. broken. like someone’s finishing the song that never ended.
the music room got moved after the accident. windows barred. range moved further out. but the piano stayed. no one wanted to touch it.
one time, during cleanup week, i played a few chords on it just to mess around. sounded okay at first. then the lights flickered and it played those three broken notes on its own. real slow. real final.
i left the room. didn’t go back the rest of the summer.
carrie wasn’t the only ghost in camp. but she might’ve been the only one still trying to say something.
okay. so this one? this isn’t just a ghost story.
this is something worse.
so before bellroot was officially a summer camp, the land was a private estate. big forest property with a lake and a summer house owned by some rich guy — oswald, i think. and the story goes, he had a friend come visit one year. brought his kid along. brian.
brian was... curious, i guess. asked too many questions. poked around in places he shouldn’t. supposedly he started noticing weird stuff. like symbols carved into trees. bones that weren’t quite animal. the wrong kind of prayers being whispered during dinner.
and then one day, he vanished.
no police report. no search team. just... gone.
but the real story? the one that didn’t make it into any file or record?
oswald buried him. alive.
they say he knocked brian out, dragged him into the woods, and put him in the ground. didn’t even know the kid was still breathing until it was too late. or maybe he did know. maybe that was the point.
years later, when the estate turned into Camp Bellroot, they built cabins over the same land. guess which one ended up over brian’s grave?
yep. cabin C.
and now? now the kids tell a story. about how, if you press your ear to the wooden floor just after lights out — real still, no talking — you can hear scratching.
not mice. not wind. not pipes. scratching. slow. deliberate. from *underneath.*
some kids say they’ve felt the boards shift under their beds. like something is pushing up, trying to get through.
every now and then, a nail pops up from the floorboards in the middle of the night. like it’s being pushed out.
i slept in cabin C my first year as a counselor. woke up with a splinter in my cheek and dirt on my pillow. windows were closed. floor was clean the night before.
i don’t know if brian’s still down there. or if what’s left of him is something else now.
but whatever it is... it hasn’t stopped trying to come up.
this story’s the one nobody likes telling. not because it’s boring. but because the more you talk about it... the more it feels like something’s listening.
may spencer wasn’t like most of us. she liked being alone. liked exploring. never wanted to sit through lame trust games or nature trivia hour. she’d just vanish for hours and show back up dirty and grinning like she’d found buried treasure.
one day she didn’t come back.
some campers said she was last seen near the edge of the woods behind the mess hall. others swear she went to the lake. but the truth is, nobody saw her after 2pm. not even the counselors (or at least, none that’d admit it).
a week later, the caves got sealed up.
not officially, though. no news about a “cave system,” no police tape. just a bunch of fencing and locked gates and new “keep out” signs. none of us even *knew* there were caves until the signs went up.
the story that spread — the one we whispered to each other in the dark — was that may found one of the old tunnels under camp and went inside. and somewhere down there… she found it.
the god.
they say it lives deep under the camp. that it doesn’t move. doesn’t speak. just sits there, pulsing, like a massive rotten sun bleeding into the stone. and when may saw it, it saw her too.
and it *ate her.* not like chomping and chewing. like… her body started breaking. burning from the inside out. melting. like her soul was being sucked out piece by piece through her eyes. and it took a long, long time.
the worst part?
some say you can still hear it.
if you get close to the fence. if you're dumb enough to lean in when no one’s around. if you’re real quiet — like dead quiet — you can hear it. her.
a scream. constant. raw. like someone’s being killed over and over again, forever.
they never found her body. the adults stopped mentioning her name. but the caves are still there. locked up, yeah — but not gone.
and nothing that old ever stays hungry for long.
okay, so george martin. real quiet dude. kinda lanky. always wore this one soaked baseball cap, even when we were indoors. he got picked on a lot — mostly by kids who peaked in 7th grade and thought giving people swirlies made them cool.
one time george ran off after getting dunked in the lake. counselor said he just “needed to cool off” (lol, nice parenting), but george didn’t come back for the afternoon hike or the dinner roll call.
the next morning, power was out in half the camp. water heater was cold. lights flickering. fridge buzzing like it was haunted. staff blamed it on squirrels or whatever.
but then maintenance went into the old supply room under the gym — the one none of us kids were supposed to even *know* existed — and found something...
there was a smell. like burnt copper and wet dog. and the lights kept shorting out the deeper they went. and then — on the floor, slumped against the fuse box, still damp from the lake water — was george.
he must’ve ducked in there to hide and backed into the busted generator. barefoot. soaking. boom.
they never let us near that room again. locked it tight. but stuff kept happening after that. power flickers. camp PA turning on by itself. radios picking up whispers. and one time — swear to god — the microwave played george’s favorite song for no reason and nobody even had a CD in it.
they say his ghost’s in the wires now. watching through the buzz and hum. especially when you're alone in the dark and everything suddenly gets quiet, except for that one single flickering light…
yeah. that’s him.
you ever hear metal creak for no reason?
like... dead silent forest, no wind, just creeeeaaaak — like something big is moving just outta sight?
yeah, that’s what the zipline sounds like now. not every night, but sometimes. always when it’s foggy. or just too quiet.
the story goes: rachel ortiz was one of those girls who always volunteered first. fearless, fun, tried everything. so of course she wanted to be the first camper to try the new zipline across the lake — even though staff hadn’t really tested it yet. (cause who needs safety checks when you’ve got duct tape and good vibes, right?)
she climbed up, clipped herself in, kicked off — and halfway across, the line jammed. total dead stop. just dangling there mid-air, legs swinging.
the counselors? nowhere. the lookout? probably asleep. so rachel, thinking she could fix it herself, started trying to inch along the line, hand over hand.
but something slipped. or snapped. the harness buckle popped open. and she dropped.
not into the lake. not to the ground. she dropped just enough for the safety line to catch under her arms — right at her neck.
she didn’t die quick.
by the time staff noticed, she was already gone. limp and swaying like a paper lantern. they blamed it on equipment failure and “camper negligence.” classic.
but here’s the thing: the line still creaks. kids say they see a shape on the line at night. counselors joke about the “zip ghost” when flashlights go out on hikes — but nobody jokes when they see that figure swinging above the trees.
sometimes you hear breathing. slow and labored. right behind you, when you're at the top of the zipline tower, alone.
and every now and then, someone wakes up with bruises on their neck. like something tried to clip them in while they were sleeping.
rachel’s still out there. trying to finish the ride.