GHOST STORY: Believing in what I see

Madison MacArthur headshot

Editor’s note: This week, members of the KentWired staff will be visiting the studio for a special Ghost Stories episode of Kent Read, Kent Write, Kent Stop Talking! Here’s a preview of the spooky, scary stories to come this Wednesday.

I believe in ghosts.

I don’t put all my faith in “live” television shows such as “Ghost Adventures,” or even Netflix’s newest show “The Haunted,” but from my experiences, I believe spirits exist.

I’ve been working at a summer camp since 2016, and each year, something unnatural happens. Whether it’s just terror from working in the middle of the woods for eight weeks or the land is actually haunted, we could never get a grip on what was truly going on.

I don’t think we ever will.

I remember in 2017, I was setting up the crafts room to prepare to make pinecone buddies (a different take on pet rocks), and I saw a kid, dressed in jeans and a simple white shirt looking at the woods through the window.

At first, I thought it was one of the day campers who had wandered toward the playground, and I didn’t think anything of it. I continued to pull out pipe cleaners, googly eyes and construction paper when the kid caught my eye again.

I remember he was very still, and because he couldn’t have been older than 7 years old, I think that’s what caught my eye. The fact he was so still, just looking off into the woods. And by himself: Rule No. 1 at camp is that the kids don’t wander off alone.

I turned away from the window and opened the door to call out and, at that moment, he vanished.

I made my way to the picnic tables where the rest of the campers and staff were eating breakfast before their day of activities. I asked one of my friends if they called back their camper that I saw at the playground — they just kind of looked at me like I was crazy, and I probably sounded like it.

They had 15 campers and all of them were accounted for, chomping down on Cocoa Puffs and spilling milk across the wood table.

I went back over to the woods and walked around, looking for the kid I saw, but he was gone. At lunch, I shared the weird story with some other staff members. Two of them agreed and said the week before, they saw a kid standing on a path right by those woods.

I don’t know whether we had all hallucinated the same ghost; usually by the end of the summer, we all go little nuts, but I can’t put it out of my mind.

So, yeah, I believe in ghosts; those weird energies that make a room chill, make the lights flicker and blow out the candles.

Madison MacArthur is an assigning editor. Contact her at [email protected].