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Compromised Behavior & Crying Babies: July & August 1988
My first real job as a Girl Scout Camp Counselor at the age of 18 had many twists and turns, not the least of which being the paranormality that followed me wherever I went. When I'm in the midst of a personal flap, there is no location to retreat to in which to find sanctuary. I can only wait for time to pass until the flap is over. The spring and summer of '88 was a very active flap period.
I soon developed a reputation in camp for 3 things: weeping at the drop of a hat, being an apparent source of some freaky things, and– most surprisingly, being the most popular counselor with my kids…
The first part– falling into tears so easily, was no doubt a left over from my weepy junior and senior high school days when I was so over-whelmed I couldn't handle all the stress, so it just spilled out of me– literally. Given the fear issues I was dealing with, and my overall sensitivity, I doubt most people would be surprised that I was often on the verge of tears. It was something I hated. I dreaded the lack of control, the loss of dignity and either the scorn or pity that would be heaped upon me socially as a response. I prefer to cry alone away from the gaze of others, and when I can't manage that– I've always found it to be humiliating.
Perhaps in unconscious acknowledgment of this, I chose a befitting camp nickname. All the counselors in such residence camps traditionally choose a camp name (or have it chosen for them.) My camp name my first year was Rain. I was thinking Pacific Northwest weather, and my long locks of hair raining over my body, and even the cloud o' doom hanging over my head, since I was semi-Goth by that time– but my fellow counselors nodded to each other about the appropriateness of such a name due to my easy tears. I was mortified to come across a letter one of them got from a boyfriend that included the line: “… just leave all the crying and shit to Rain.“
Despite being a bit of a crybaby, and the odd atmosphere of my unit, I established myself right away for every session as being among the most beloved of the counselors. Given how unpopular I was as a teenager myself, I found this perplexing sometimes. However, I knew how to use humor and insight to communicate with often rebellious and testing campers. I made them laugh and follow the rules. Every session the camp director would remark about how many of my camper's parents were impressed with what their daughters were telling them about me. I was greatly relieved, because finding that I could work with young teens helped to decrease my odd discomfort I had begun to develop with children. It wasn't because I couldn't understand them, get along with them, and keep excellent discipline all at the same time though. I surprised myself and my success with my campers greatly added to my confidence by the end of the summer.
However-! There was no getting around the thread of strangeness that wound through the entire season.
The “weird” aspect of my reputation came about because of several odd things that happened around me at camp. The area around my unit, Tee Pee, felt haunted, for lack of another word. But only the summer I was there. The eerieness was gone when I was no longer counselor of that unit. The summer of '88 we were constantly dealing with strange noises and feeling watched. I tried not to let it get to me, which was easier when I was surrounded by fellow counselors and girls in their early to mid-teens.
There were constant hushed conversations about people hearing what seemed like invisible things walking or running around us. (Note: there were deer aplenty we saw every day, but in mature forest, undergrowth is sparse, due to lack of light, so we could easily SEE most deer anywhere near us, and they preferred to stay some distance away.) The campers in MY unit reported more problems with thinking there were intruders than anywhere else, which incidentally remained true even my second year when I worked with younger children in Central Camp. Given that we were a bunch of young women and girls out in the woods, we had a strict protocol that had to be observed for any such reports. It meant being confined to quarters until a 'sweep' was run with camp vehicles and the central staffers driving about, checking all the ways in and out of camp to verify no one was there.
The report given the most often-? That of a skinny man dressed in black watching from behind trees and ducking and running when spotted. Week after week we kept getting entirely new intruder alerts from entirely new sets of girls, and mostly in my unit or the one closest to us, called Cheesiah, another camp area for teen girls. Because of this, the park rangers and camp director thought a real person was behind it– and intruder alerts were serious business. No one was ever spotted by any adults, however– so such reports are suspect. For myself, though, the description is just a little too coincidental for comfort.
Things became far more disturbing, however, when I began to be confronted by my fellow counselors during the day for odd behavior on my part at night. They told me I was getting up in the middle of the night and leaving. They assumed I couldn't sleep and was going for what we called “Taps”– which meant going to the staff house for a break after the campers were asleep. Many of the staffers and counselors did this because it was time off away from the girls without a time limit (as our only break otherwise was a 2-hour one at some point in the day called a “Two.”) But I only went to Taps a couple of times the whole summer– I was too exhausted to do anything other than sleep once the girls were settled in! I was dealing with my chronic illness even then, and was seldom a very active counselor. My strengths were in conversation, singing, storytelling, and knowledge about nature– I was not athletic in the slightest. I was the slowest hiker the entire summer, and I didn't have extra energy for fun things like Taps with the other counselors.
One such confrontation that stuck in my mind was over halfway through the middle of the summer. We had just finished getting back from breakfast at main camp (which involved a mile hike back and forth) and the girls had some down time before their day's activities. The other 3 counselors were sitting around the campfire ring (sans fire, as it was daytime) and muttering to one another and looking back at me. Then the most bold of them, a short blond girl who called herself Pebbles, called me over.
“Rain-! You've got to stop freaking us out,” she began.
A ball of heavy dread filled my belly as I asked her what she meant.
She explained, “You came back from Taps last night and Moose and I were still awake, and you came in and told me to come out because some people wanted to talk to me.” [Moose was another counselor, a young woman 6' tall and muscular.]
My eyebrows must have risen to my hairline, “I did WHAT!?” Once more, she was reporting something to me that I had no memory of.
She repeated her story and said she refused to come out of the tent, and instead she called me inside. I came in, but continued to try to persuade her to come outside. She said I acted totally awake, but that my personality was completely changed. At this point, the others sharing my tent were used to me telling them I didn't remember taking off in the middle of the night for an hour or more, and back at Taps, no one ever saw me– so collectively the group of us was coming to the conclusion that I was a sleepwalker. Though of course I knew I wasn't. But this case wasn't just me getting up to silently leave and return– I was speaking and looking people in the eye.
What's more, she and Moose agreed I acted very confident and almost amused by their discomfort, like I was keeping a delicious secret. I grew more and more disturbed the longer she and Moose spoke. I asked the 4th counselor, Squirt, if she remembered anything, but she was fast asleep. She slept more deeply than any of us, but always arose at dawn. Consequently, she had been the one to catch me returning after the other 2 saw me leave on many occasions.
What was the outcome of this confrontation I wondered? Pebbles got angry with me that night and told me she wasn't leaving. So she said I just stared at her for a while, and then shrugged, got up, and went back outside the tent. She and Moose then listened to me quietly tell SOMEONE that Pebbles wasn't coming (only I used her real name) and then, most disturbingly, as I walked back into our tent, they heard distinct footsteps of what sounded like a couple of people walking away! Then I just crawled into the sleeping bag on my cot and fell right asleep like it was no big deal at all.
I was flabbergasted to hear such a thing. I swore I didn't remember any of it (and to this day I still do not know what happened all those nights I was just wandering off to gods know where, maybe once or twice a week.) I burst into tears and apologized, over and over again, for behaving in such a way. The counselors were all looking back and forth at one another. They said they believed me, but I was seriously starting to scare them! “What I want to know,” Moose frowned at me, “is who were the other people who came with you to the tent? If you're playing some sort of joke on us, its not funny.” Pebbles refused to look at me, “We're not exactly scaredy-cats, but we stayed up all night after that– HOLDING HANDS! We were too scared to go pee even until Squirt woke up!“
I just kept shaking my head in denial and crying, trying not to be so loud any of the girls could hear me. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. And yet I knew they were telling me the truth. I had been doing these things they said. Though I had no direct memory of what I was being told about, it sounded very familiar on a deep level, like I could ALMOST remember it.
Eventually, my desperate apologies and tears seemed to convince my tent-mates that I was not consciously involved in any conspiracy. Since I was known to be a timid mouse personality-wise, but also very sweet and kind-hearted, they couldn't believe I would do such a thing. But who were the others walking away? Maybe someone ran into me sleep-walking and walked me 'home' or something? But no one else at the camp had ever encountered me walking around like that. It was a mystery without an answer.
And like many such mysteries, it was dropped and we never spoke of it again. Except that I begged them to please check to make sure I was awake if I got up in the middle of the night (I didn't even leave the tent at night to go pee until dawn, though, because I was such a chicken.) They agreed, but from what I gather– they continued to let me slink in and out after that. Neither did they report my nocturnal wanderings to the camp director, which they technically should have.
Finally, I sensed or guessed more at what was going on with the aliens than I remembered consciously.
Direct quotes from my journal written at the time say things like:
~ I'm thinking about Douglas and the Aliens again. With Doug, its the same old thing. I miss him, I want to be with him, etc. Which is crazy. I've never met this person in my normal state of mind! If he's real, I think I see him while I'm with THEM. He may even be one of them. Or a mixture of us and them. I know I've seen one like that who is into me, but it makes me angry. I don't like being fooled into feeling romantic feelings towards a hybrid. Hybrids are NOT SEXY!!!!
["Douglas" was a person I seem to have seen growing up whom I thought was just a fantasy for a long time, until I realized I got obsessed about him only during a flap. More on him soon. I was also confused between Douglas and Christopher Robin.]
~Then there are the aliens. I can't remember anything beyond that one night. Problem is– I know, somehow, that they've been around me a lot this spring and summer. A LOT.
I think we've been discussing things. Or, at least, they've been telling me things. Its not just ginea pig stuff. I'm certain they're very worried about something. Maybe that future junk. I think they test me in psychological ways. Like they'll make up a scenario and make me believe its real, and watch to see my reaction. Afterwards, they ask me questions about why I did this or that.
But– I don't actually know any of this! Its all just impressions and feelings. Strong ones, but I have next to no memory to back it all up.
I'm terrified of them. I can't help it. I dread seeing them. I fear losing control of my life. I hate it when my reality is turned upside down.This I know.
One event that happened consciously in the middle of the day that I now believe was one such psychological test occurred during a break day in between sessions. We had to do evaluations all day long, and in the middle of this I went back to our tent back in Tee Pee to get a sweater for the evening. I was all alone in that area of the woods and I felt the charged atmosphere as soon as I entered our area. It made me nervous, but at that point I didn't know what to do besides carry on as if all was normal.
I grabbed my sweater and left the tent to turn right onto the path leading back to main camp. That's when I heard a distinct sound: that of a human baby crying off in the underbrush behind some trees to my left. I hesitated, not quite believing what I was hearing, and took a few steps closer to the sound. Surely it was a bird or something…?
The cries grew louder and more intense, and there was no mistaking it for an animal sound at that point. And then, just like THAT– I knew it was THEM, and it was a TEST. And I wanted no part of it. I didn't want to see them. I wasn't going to pretend to rescue a baby! Screw THAT. And I turned and ran like hell on pure adrenaline for almost half a mile, dodging tree roots and stones like they were nothing. I've never run like that in my life either before or since. I once saw a cougar with a half-grown cub, and I backed away slowly and then when out of sight ran like hell, and it still didn't compare to how I ran from the sound of a human newborn baby screaming in the middle of the woods in camp. When we returned to Tee Pee a couple of hours later, all was normal– and I refused to mention it.
2012-08-29 03:09:11
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