Tag Archives: Campfire Stories

The Ghost Family

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Title: The Ghost Family

Genere and Sub-Genre:

Verbal Folklore: Horror Story (Campfire Story)

Language: English

Country Where Story is From: United States

Informant Data:

Rachael Collins was born in Dallas, Texas and is 21 years old. She currently attends Cornell University but before that she transferred from Case Western Reserve University, where she was selected to be on student leadership panel.

Contextual Data:

Rachael often goes camping but she heard this story during her time at Case Western Reserve University, when she was chosen for a leadership expedition where she went with other students and camped for three days. She said that this story was traditionally told every year to all the students on the program, and that the area where they camped was extremely wooded and they listened to this story while roasting marshmallows and sitting around a campfire. It was told to her that a family disappeared around the area they were camping area by as well.

Item:

Transcript of Audio File:

“One day, one day a long long time ago, there was a whole group, a family who went camping. When they were camping and they were sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows,  when some one screamed, but everyone in the family was with them. Who could be screaming? Slowly the father stood up and he walked, he was trying to find where the screaming came from. ‘Where are you?’ he asked ‘Are you okay?’

And there was a light whisper that said ‘were coming for you. That’ll be you.’ He kind of freaked out, he ran back to his family, but they were all gone. Where were they? He couldn’t find them. He ran back to the town as fast as he could. He got the cops, the police, involved anyone really who could help him look for his family.  But no one could find them.

But 10 years later, someone saw the family, sitting in the exact location, roasting marshmallows. But the only one who wasn’t there was the father.”

Informant’s Comments: Rachael said this was a campfire story she told people often, but that she often told it in different ways. She also formally apologizes for recording this with Holiday Music playing the background.

Collector’s Comments: I have not heard this story specifically, as I do not usually go to Ohio (where Case Western Reserve University is located), but I have heard variations of campfire stories where family members disappear.

Collector’s Name: Alexandra Collins

Dog Lick

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Title: Dog Lick

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore: Children’s Folklore (Horror Stories)
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: United States

Informant Data:

Sharon Bian was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1997 and grew up in the surrounding area. Sharon attended public school in New Haven county. She currently attends Dartmouth College and studies Engineering Sciences. In her free time, she likes to go camping and play frisbee.

Contextual Data:

Sharon heard this story at the age of 10 from her older cousin while camping at Sleeping Giant State Park in Connecticut. As a child the story freaked her out, but it was tradition for all the children to tell scary stories while camping.

Item:

Transcript of Associated File:

I went on a lot of camping trips with my family when I was little and my cousin would come with us a lot of times and one time when I was 10 she told me a horror story about a little girl and her dog and it was quite traumatizing to me at the time and I definitely remember it in great detail. So the story goes that the little girl is home alone for the first time because her parents are going out. And she only has her dog for company. And she is  quiet nervous to be home alone for the first time so she locks all her door and windows and she goes to bed and she always has her dog sleeping next to her under the bed. And whenever she gets scared she would like put her hand down and, and like maybe she’ll pet the dog or the dog would lick her hand and then she’ll know that she’d be safe. So she goes to bed and everything is normal and sometime in the middle of the night  she’ll hear like, she hears like a whimpering noise, like behind a wall or something she wakes up and gets scared but puts her hand down under her bed  and she feels like a lick on her hand so she calms down and goes back to bed. And then she wakes up later to the same noise and she wakes up puts her hand down, feels a lick, gets calm again and falls asleep. This happens repeatedly until… then there’s a new noise and this is like  a weird dripping noise. So she is pretty frightened at this point, she gets up and feels her way through the dark room and walks down the hallway and opens the bathroom. And in the bathroom she sees her dead mutated dog disemboweled hanging in the shower with blood pooling all over the floor. So that is the story and I guess the question is who was licking her hand?

Informant’s Comments:

“That scared me a lot when I was little and I still remember it to this day.”

Collector’s Comments:

Campfire Storys were told from child to child making this children’s folklore. The story may not seem scary now, but they are scary for children.

Collector’s Name: Sydney Zhou

Tags/Keywords: Horror, Children Folklore, Campfire Stories

Red Eye

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Title: Red Eye

General Information about Item:

Verbal Folklore: Children’s Folklore (Campfire Horror Stories)

This item was collected at Dartmouth, United States

Informant Data:

Emma Hobday was born in Arlington Virginia and is 19 years old. Before attending Dartmouth, she went to Williamsburg Middle School and Yorktown High School. Two of her friends in high school were Katie Dawkins and Elina Kent.

Contextual Data:

Emma and her friends had a sleepover party at Katie Dawkin’s house during around 9th grade.  During the night, they all went into the basement. Because the basement had a creepy swinging light in the center of the room, they decided to sit around it and tell scary stories. Elina Kent, who was also at the party, told the group the “Red Eye” story. Horror Stories like this one are told between friends at any time. Normally, they are told during the night to add to the ambiance and fear factor of the story.

 

Item:

Download “Red Eye”

Transcript of Associated File:

So, a girl lives alone in a house and every night she goes to sleep, but she starts to have weird dreams that wake her up in the middle of the night. So, one night when she’s woken up by a strange dream she’s somehow inspired to go outside and her house is surrounded by a fence, a wooden fence, and there’s a tiny little hole in the fence that she’s never looked at before. And this night she goes and she puts her eye up to the hole. And all she sees past it is red. And so she thinks, “hmm, well I guess that just must be my neighbor’s putting in a new…new shed or something, a new little red shed. So she writes it off. She says, “oh I just had a bad dream.” she goes back to bed.

The next night the same thing happens. She wakes up sweating profusely. She’s had another terrible dream. She goes out to the yard sees the same red thing through the hole. So that goes on all week until one night she’s woken up by a dream where she sees a ghost. And as she looks at the ghost she notices that has pure red eyes. She screams and whips out of her bed and the ghost is gone. This time, she walks out to her yard, looks through the hole in her fence and the red is gone. She just sees into her neighbor’s yard. She’s panicking. She goes back to her room, splashes water on her face to calm herself down and in the mirror she sees that her eyes are now red.

Informant’s Comments: The swinging light in my friend’s made the stories extremely creepy.

Collector’s Name: Andrew Alini

Tags/Keywords: Horror, Campfire Stories, Children’s folklore,