They say folk stories are how we transmit transcendent truths across generations. The quintessential American folk story is the campfire tale. The pedagogical value of this tradition is opaque. We usually think of them only as scary stories for kids. After having a peculiar experience, I believe there is more to be gleaned if you look.
There’s a certain backcountry area about an hour and a half from my hometown where campgrounds seem to grow like weeds. Besides park and conservation area campsites, there are at least a couple dozen full camping complexes operated by various churches, schools, and organizations, all within about 40 thousand acres.
This area has a campfire ghost story that seems to be particular to it. I stayed at three different overnight activity camps around there as a kid: one Cub Scouts camp, one Junior Achievement camp, and a for-profit summer camp. At all three I heard some version of the story told around a bonfire. I also overheard it being told at a neighboring fire pit when my family stayed at a park resort around there. I never heard it at any of the other various scouting camps I went to, and I’ve found no evidence that the legend exists outside that little camping microcommunity.
The essentials are that a young girl at one of the local camps was playing recklessly around a bonfire and fell in, face first. She (presumably) died, and now walks the fields and backroads at night, her horribly burnt face visible to anyone who crosses her path.
That’s pretty much it. The standard telling doesn’t mention her actually doing anything to people besides scaring them. Yet this story managed to freak me out as a kid more than any other campfire tale. Burning was one of my biggest childhood fears. Not just burning of my own body, but the idea of witnessing someone else burn. To have your face burnt off seemed worse than death itself. Would life even be worth living after something like that? It didn’t help that this story, at least the part about the girl falling into the fire, felt like a true one. My mom once mentioned that she heard about something like that at a Girl Scout camp in the area when she was young.
My enthusiasm for communal camping continued into my teens. I heard the story as an assistant camp counselor a couple times. Then in college I started volunteering with a camp for troubled preteen boys. At a fall weekend retreat with this organization, I decided the story of the girl who fell into a campfire and burned her face would be a good way to discourage horseplay. There were about a dozen youths at this retreat, and almost as many counselors and chaperones. We gathered around a fire pit surrounded by woodland and had some group bonding time. When it came time to tell scary stories, I went last. I relayed the story of Sarah Silverstein, the name I had decided to give the poor girl, with verve, being sure to pantomime key moments. My telling of the story had all the dramatic bits I had heard over the years: the girl’s stubborn refusal to listen to camp counselors, her tragic death as a result of the burning, and her lich-like haunting of the woods and roads with her sooty, disfigured face. The wind picked up during my performance, adding to the ambience.
When I finished, the boys just stared in stunned silence. I think I killed the mood for the rest of the night. After an uncomfortable silence one of the other counselors made a joke, and the tension broke somewhat. Still, the kids had a subdued demeanor as we wrapped up and returned to the facilities for the night.
That night I had a terrible nightmare. It was my first dream about the campfire girl in years. Some of it involved encountering her on the road or in the woods, but most of it was just me being forced to watch her falling into the fire over and over.
In the morning, we set off in the camp minibus for a museum trip. It was raining. Despite my nightmare I was relaxed. Then the bus had radiator trouble and we had to stop on a gravel back road barely three miles from camp. We called a tow truck but it was expected to take at least an hour and a half to arrive. By now the weather was really getting bad. The road was lightly wooded on either side and I started to worry that a tree would fall on the minibus.
According to Google Maps, there was a camp just under a mile away. It was a church camp, and the app didn’t say it was closed. I tried calling the listed number but my reception dropped at that moment. Fearing the weather would deteriorate further, I volunteered to make a dash for it and see if there was anyone who could help us, while another adult made the three-mile journey back to our camp to get his personal vehicle.
The journey took me down the gravel road for a ways, then a paved two-lane road, then another gravel road. I had to cut across a field to avoid creek flooding. The storm started to break as I came in view of the gate to the church camp. Finding the gate unlocked, I pushed past it and walked toward what looked like the administrative building. I noted that they had their own bus parked outside.
After I rang the doorbell a couple times, an elderly woman answered. “Oh dear, you’re soaked!” was the first thing she said. I chuckled slightly, then explained the situation. “Oh yes, come in, come in,” she hastened. I hung up my rain suit on a coat rack just inside the door at her direction.
She briefly said something about preparing for an incoming group of campers the next weekend before asking me to go over my story again. She asked if I would like her husband to take us back to our camp in their bus. I was about to say yes but then remembered that the main road was flooded. She said there was another way around that didn’t have any streams. When I accepted her offer, she sat down at the desk and picked up a walkie-talkie. “Hey John?” she spoke into it. “There’s a man here from the reform camp. He says their bus broke down and they need help. Can you come to the office?” I heard the man say he was on his way. She explained that he was on the other side of the camp and would be a minute, then asked if I would like some coffee.
The woman’s face was discolored in several places. There was scar tissue around her cheeks and nose, and darkened skin covering much of her neck. There were some spots that looked like they were once blisters. Still, she had gentle eyes and a warm smile. I smiled back as I accepted her offer. “Yes, that would be great. Thank you very much.”
Written by HopelessNightOwl
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