Genre Children’s Folklore, Scary Story

Language English

Country of Origin United States

Informant Vanessa Pinney, ’21

Date Collected February 14, 2018

Collected by  Daniel McClafferty

Informant Data

Vanessa Pinney was born in New York City on August 9, 1999. She grew up with two sisters, one four years older and the other two years older. She went to summer camp for several years between the ages of eight and fourteen.

Contextual Data

She had summer camps that were wilderness-based in Maine, and they lived in one-room, wooden cabins with no electricity. They went on a three-day canoeing trip along the Androscoggin river in Southern Maine. While on this trip, there were two tents for the eight campers on it, and they would tie a flashlight to the top like a lamp, and would adjust the sleeping bags in a circle around them so they were closer together. When they were not sleeping, they would sit in their sleeping bags so they could face each other. They would stay up socializing late into the night despite needed sleep for the next day, telling each other scary stories, and this was one of them.

Item

One day, a man was driving, and he ran out of gas. He got out of the car, and saw a massive gorilla. He ran away, and the only thing he could find was an abandoned mansion. He broke in, and was searching for a place to hide, and he found a door that lead to a spiral staircase. When he reached the bottom of this staircase, it was a dead end. He crouched against the wall, and he could hear the massive thumping of the gorilla’s enormous feet, as it was running down the staircase behind him, and he fears for his life. Then, someone jumps in the children’s tent, and yells “boo!!!”, and scares everyone there.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/wildlife-group-demands-urgent-probe-9042896