Unexplainable events
One of the last trips I lead for Project USE this summer was a three day camping trip on their property off Clinton Road in northern New Jersey. The reason this trip is making onto this blog is because of some events that happened the first night.
We set up camp in a standard manner. The four boys had their tent, and across the campsite – about sixty feet away - were the four girls in their tent. The two chaperones were each in their own tents. “Sue” was spending her first night in the woods and set her tent up close to the girls’ tent. “John”, who has through hiked the Appalachian Trail, set his up a long distance away, nestled under a hemlock tree. I had two new instructors working with me and they were sharing a tent near Sue’s. I waited for everyone to go to bed, and then set out my sleeping pad next to the fire and covered myself under my little bug-net dome.
As usual, voices were pouring out of the two students’ tents. They were a group of high school freshman and I gave them no specific bed time beside they need to not keep everyone else awake. This request was obviously being ignored, but I always let it go for a time-being, until I get tired enough to care if I am being kept awake. My spot was considerably closer to the girls’ tent and I could hear everything they were saying/singing. Nothing bad was going on except for the volume but I let this go because I could see the boys’ tent was still awake as well. They were much further away and I had a hard time hearing them – especially over the girls. I noticed the lights would go out in their tent, things would get quite then all of a sudden the lights would be on and there would be a ruckus coming from the tent. This didn’t seem too odd because I am very use to these urban youth reacting with great emotion over finding a bug in their tent. The routine was usually the same: there would be screaming, lights swirling all over the inside of the tent, a five minute argument on who is going to squish the thing, then another brief uproar followed by a gradual decrease in volume until silence was reached again. I assumed this was the case in the boys’ tent that night. What does assuming do again?
After an unclear amount of time, I decide enough was enough and it was time for my friendly reminder to be quite. I simply yelled over to the girls’ tent to quite down and go to bed. This worked fine and it was quite. However, the boys’ tent kept up the same routine of loud chaos, then dark silence for a long time. I eventually got up to see what the heck was going on. As I reach the tent, they were up and panicking. The lights were on and in my most pleasant, middle of the night voice, I asked them to be quite and go to sleep. They responded in a way I never expected.
“Craig, there is something spitting on the walls in here!”
“What?” I replied
“Every time we turn the lights out and turn them back on there is more spit on the walls.”
Even though I could see the dime-sized drops of bubbly substance on the walls of the tent from the outside, I was in no mood to try and figure it out that night.
“And something keeps grabbing us through the tent. I think there is a raccoon or a bear out there.” This was the next amazing statement to come from within the glowing tent.
“Oh, and sticks keep flying in through the door and into the tent, and our shoes are hitting us in the head.”
Figuring they were messing with each other and keeping all of camp up, I stated matter-of-factly: “Since there is nothing I can do about it tonight, go to bed and we will figure it out in the morning.”
In hindsight, I am surprised how well this worked. They quieted down and went to bed. Not for long of course. I am not sure how much time passed or what time it was but the next thing I remember was waking up to a flashlight in my eyes and Sue walking towards the four boys who were outside their tent and panicking. I jumped up and headed over to find them all nervously talking about strange events that have been happening to them all night long. Some of the comments were:
“A hand keeps grabbing us through the tent.”
“Our shoes are flying around and hitting us.”
“There is more and more spit on the walls.”
“Something grabbed my foot though the tent.”
“I hear things walking around outside.”
“Something grabbed my head from outside.”
“There must be a bear.”
“Oh yeah, we woke up once and the tent was smaller and we were all squished together in the middle with the walls closing in around us.”
Sue and I looked at each other with the same “what the heck is going on here?” look. We calmed them down and tried to get an actual story from them. What we could gather that night and the following day was that there was something messing with them all night and they kept thinking it was one of the other kids in the tent. So they would turn the lights off, hold each other’s head’s down and wait. Then a shoe would hit on of them, or they would get grabbed. Then they would turn the lights back on and the spit would have increased while the lights were out. They would check outside and there would be nothing. As we all stood there in the dark, they were obviously terrified and wanted an explanation. Sue and I looked at each other and literally had nothing to say besides our questioning their story. But I have never seen kids this convinced. I learned that they dealt with it as long as they could then they decided to call for help. “Craig, Sue, help us!” “Help!” they yelled into the night. I didn’t hear a thing but the screams woke Sue up and then her flashlight woke me up.
These boys were shaken and were pacing back and forth. I literally had no idea what to do. This was not covered in “Intro to Rec” at Green Mountain College. I was mentally preparing to hike everyone out to the cabin a half-hour away. I figured there was no way they were going back to sleep. Hell, I was getting scared. But suddenly one boy asked me “Can we move the tent closer to you and go back to bed?” I was so shocked I instantly said “yes” and grabbed the tent. We carried it over and set it down about fifteen feet from my little mesh dome. They climbed in, and turned out the lights and went to sleep. Sue and were left standing there in total disbelief in the story and the fact they just went back to bed. Sue headed towards her tent and I laid down under the mesh and looked at the starts through the trees and tried not to let my mind wander to scary thoughts.
As I laid there I tried to make sense of all this. I know I didn't do anything, I know it was not Sue. I am pretty sure the other chaperone, John, wouldn’t do it. Plus even if he could there is no way he could move fast enough in the open trees to not be seen by the kids or Sue and I. The girls were sound asleep and terrified of the dark, so they never left their tent. And my co-instructors, as discussed the next day, would not scare the bejesus out of kids on their first day as employees. The obvious next explanation was it was the boys messing with each other. The only way this could be possible is that one or two of them were doing it and were tremendous actors. But I saw these kids faces that night and they were not acting. Plus they all took action to prove it was no one in the tent. They all stated that they were all in the tent when they were getting grabbed from outside. And they repeatedly closed the corner of the door where the sticks were coming in, but would later find it open a little bit. I could think of nothing, so eventually I fell asleep, wondering if I was to be woken up again by their screams.
I woke up to morning and silence. As everyone else woke, the story started spreading to the rest of the campsite from the four boys, Sue and I. No one heard anything last night. And nothing bothered them after moving the tent.
They whole group came to me for answers. I had none. I found it a tough thing to deal with. On one hand, I didn’t want to tell them they were messed with by a ghost because they were there to “get more comfortable in the woods”, but on the other hand I did not want to dismiss their shared experience or discount the possibility of something outside of our normal realm of explanation happening. I have heard enough ghost stories that I know they are not all fabricated. I simply explained it as a series of unexplainable events.
The rest of the school was also camping around the property with other instructors. Of course as my crew found the other groups the story had to be told. And, of course, no one believed them so the other groups came to me for some rational explanation or an admittance that I did it. I stuck to my story, I told them what I saw and told them it was a series of unexplainable events.
The most impressive thing about this whole event was the four boys. After being totally overwhelmed and messed with all night, they felt that moving close to me made enough difference to fall asleep. Little did they know I was lying on the ground trying not to freak out. Not only that, they went to bed the next night making jokes about the whole thing and only a little nervous about it happening again. I guess moving the tent did the trick. Did we move off a piece of space close to a spirit’s spirit? Or was the “thing” actually nervous to mess with them close to me? Ha! I’m going with option A.
The other interesting point I noticed was the progression the names of the thing went through the next day. It started as a bear, then a thing, then it, then him, then the ghost. It was as though as the story was told over and over again it sunk in that this might have been what everyone was thinking it was but too afraid to say. The boys eventually confidently called it a ghost. And everyone else was not sure what to think.
Then I remembered. As we were walking out of the campsite the morning of the third day, it hit me. As I mentioned above, the property is on Clinton Road. Clinton Road is famous in New Jersey for being the most haunted road in the sate. Look it up in “Weird New Jersey”. I told the kids this news and we walked out. So many questions, so few answers. This was several months ago now, and I still describe it as a series of unexplainable events. And I like it that way because I think we spend too much time trying to explain everything that happens.
