Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2017 14:12:01 GMT
THE SUMMER CAMP STALKERS
As told by Eli Roth
Summer camp was always the best place to start, share or grow an urban legend.
Growing up, I spent my summers at sleepaway camp in Casco, Maine where the legend of "Three-Fingered Willy" ran rampant. By age 12 I had seen pretty much every slasher film ever made, and Three-Fingered Willy was said to be a camper who had been left for dead and came back to haunt the woods of Casco, killing unsuspecting campers. I was never scared of him, but there were some kids who were, and a good portion of the summer was spent terrifying these younger campers. Running into their bunk with your hand covered in ketchup claiming that Three-Fingered Willy had just attacked you — and that he was coming for this bunk next — was a favorite stunt.
A few years later, I was a camp counselor at a day camp in Weston, Mass, in charge of a group of about 35 10- and 11-year-old boys. I loved it; by the end of the summer I had an army who dressed like me and did whatever I said. Twice a summer, the group would have a sleepover at the camp. Campers packed tents, they'd be treated to an extra swim at the end of the day and we'd all barbecue — and of course, we’d tell ghost stories at night.
Somehow, the entire camp became infected by the story of "The H-Man." I don't know how The H-Man started, or why he was called The H-Man, but, according to legend, he was also a former camper who had been left for dead. On the night of the sleepover, it was said that The H-Man would come back to seek his revenge — to kill campers by ripping their chest cavity open. This gory detail was very specific to the legend (and provided lots of inspiration during art class).
In the weeks leading up to the sleepover, all the campers were using woodshop to make weapons to combat The H-Man, and one camper even planned to hold a seance that would hopefully resurrect him so we could kill him before it was time for him to kill the campers. By the night of, what had started as a sleepover had devolved into an all-out panic of kids running around screaming that they saw The H-Man, and that he was trying to kill him. Kids called their parents and went home because they were too scared to sleep, and I even confiscated a number of very, very sharp weapons the kids had snuck in.
All of this of course only grew the legend further, and the next year kids were so scared because of all the "attacks on campers" the previous summer, which were of course confirmed by all the kids who had “survived” the sleepover. I often wonder if The H-Man lasted beyond the summer of 1990 which was my last year there … because I was certainly one of the main perpetrators of spreading the myth to the next wave of petrified campers.
Whether it’s The H-Man or Three-Fingered Willy, the summer camp stalker is always out for blood every year. Campers beware ...
