When I was ten I went to Summer Camp. (Oh, I don’t want no more of Palomar! Gee mom, I wanna go home!) Last night, unbidden, a memory popped into my head of a campfire tale that was told there.
I don’t remember the setup, but it involved three young campers who decide to sneak into an old cemetery at midnight. Of course there was a ghoul, who chased the kids so he could catch them and eat them. The Counselor did his best to scare the hell out of us, of course, and we were all diggin’ the story. Well, the kids in the story ran from the ghoul; but the cemetery was surrounded by a tall fence with barbed wire on top.One kid made it over. The second one did too, with no time to lose. The third one got to the top of the fence, but his jeans snagged on the barbed wire. He was wearing Levi’s, which everyone knows are tough jeans, and he couldn’t rip himself free. The ghoul reached up and grabbed his ankle. The boy struggled to get free, but the ghoul kept pulling and pulling his leg [The Counselor suddenly reaches out and snatches the leg of the nearest camper] ‘… just like I’m pulling yours!’
Another story involved some people staying in a lonely cabin on a lake in the depth of Winter. Late at night they hear a call on the night breeze. ‘Winnnnn-de-gooooooo!’ Again, I don’t remember the story; but it involved the man-eating Windigo creature. After being frightened all night, trapped in their cabin and listening to the ghostly call – and some screams – they venture out in the morning to find a bloody depression in the snow outside their cabin. In it was the body of a man who had run so hard his legs ended in bloody stumps. And they never found out what sort of creature could make a man run his legs off – a creature that was still out there, calling ‘Winnnnn-de-gooooooo!’ in the night…