The Terror of Chapel Road

The first time I saw the ghost was on the journey up to Camp Moose Pine. I remember it like it was yesterday. My parents had been so excited when I had gotten accepted, and even more excited when I'd told them I wanted to go alone. They'd never understood what I felt for Camp Moose Pine. They didn't understand how the smell of pine needles could make you feel nostalgic, or how cold weather in late spring could make you feel alive.

They just didn't understand.

I took my time getting there, stopping every other day at a camp site along the way. Usually they were empty, but sometimes people would be there.

I wasn't ready to see other people yet.

As I got closer and closer, though, my excitement grew more and more palpable until finally, after seven months' worth of planning and dreaming and saving money, I got to Camp Moose Pine.

The first thing I did was check in at the office, where they gave me my cabin assignment and showed me around the beautiful lake with its pristine beach where we would all be swimming later that day. Then they sent me off to my cabin with a group of kids from my class who were entering Camp Moose Pine two weeks before me. We explored our cabins - mine was a cute little one-room cabin with three bunk beds - and then went down to the beach for some swimming.

My heart nearly burst out of my chest with excitement as I watched a few people dive off of the dock into the water. After a few minutes of watching, one girl jumped in and swam over to us on shore, whooping and hollering as she swam through the water until she was face to face with me. "Hey! You wanna jump?" She said all in one breath as she tugged her hair back behind her head revealing her sun-kissed cheeks and wide smile. Her eyes were sparkling in anticipation with some kind of eagerness that made me tingle inside, because I knew that feeling well.

"Definitely!" Without another thought, I took off running toward the dock and jumped off of it into the water below. When I surfaced again and looked around, the others were doing exactly what this girl had said: they were jumping off too! As they jumped off one by one into the water, my heart pounded harder and harder from excitement until finally...

After everyone had jumped in once or twice (and some more than that), everyone started swimming back toward shore as we began discussing our next activity for the day when someone screamed from across the lake: "Hey! What's that?" Everyone turned their heads at once towards the direction that person pointed in - which was straight at us - when suddenly something appeared above us in the sky: a ghostly figure wavering above just for a moment before disappearing again into thin air. The screaming intensified until everyone became silent again when suddenly one boy shouted: "Run!" And he took off down towards camp as fast as his legs could carry him while everyone else followed suit behind him.

The longer we ran away from where we'd been standing moments earlier, the more scared we all became until we all stopped running altogether once we reached our cabins and went inside so nobody would get hurt if whatever that had been showed up again. Nobody knew what was going on except for one older girl who was just an assistant counselor who said she pieced together what had happened after having experienced it herself many years ago during her first year at camp: apparently there was a ghost wandering around Camp Moose Pine who went around trying to scare everyone away from wherever he happened to be hiding at that moment in time because he didn't want anyone else to find out about his secret residence in an old chapel by the edge of Lake Moosewood nearby called Chapel Road.

I wasn't sure whether to believe what she was saying or not since none of us had actually seen this ghost (except maybe for that one boy), but she insisted he should be considered very dangerous nonetheless so none of us should try anything funny like sneaking over to Chapel Road during our stay at camp because if we did run into him then he might get angry enough at being discovered that he would hurt us somehow; probably by making us disappear somehow or something like that like he did to those poor girls ten years ago when nobody believed them about seeing him outside their cabin window in the middle of night because nobody believed any bad rumors about Camp Moose Pine especially since no such incidents ever occurred here before now so why start believing in things like ghosts now? It sounded logical enough but also scary enough that none of us were willing to take any chances whatsoever so instead we kept ourselves occupied with different activities like archery or canoeing or swimming or playing capture-the-flag or eating s'mores around a bonfire later on at night until it started getting really late so most people went back to their cabins and eventually fell asleep despite their fear over what might happen tomorrow morning when they woke up without fail early tomorrow morning without fail...just like every morning since their arrival here at Camp Moose Pine six days ago...because whenever they wake up early then they always go out onto the docks on either side of Lake Moosewood near where camp staff and counselors are holding flag raising ceremony every morning starting five days ago whenever they wake up early without fail...whereupon they have been greeted each morning by either empty docks or another flag raising ceremony held by camp staff every time they wake up early without fail...and not by a ghost...or anything else...without fail...because if nothing else has gone wrong then why believe rumors about ghosts anymore? They haven't proven anything after all...haven't proven anything yet...they haven't proven anything yet...have they?