You are here: Real Ghost Stories :: Apparitions / Voices / Touches :: The Church Camp

Real Ghost Stories

The Church Camp

 

This is my first story, thank you for reading.:)

For as long as I can remember, I've always had a fascination for paranormal. I don't recall any events when I was a child, but had several experiences as a young teen and more growing up. The first experience that I can really pinpoint was at a church camp when I was 14 years old. I wasn't the only one who saw things that weekend, but my experience there was certainly eye opening and even if I didn't believe, the events were indisputable.

The camp was for the Friday and Saturday nights, in April 2001. We arrived at the camp on Friday afternoon, nearing the evening. The first thing on the agenda for the weekend was cleansing the hall, dorms and the group. We were not even allowed to take our bags through to the dorms until this had been done. We were told to close our eyes and under no circumstances were we to open them. One of the church leaders said a prayer, then blew on a horn for quite a while. My curiosity got the best of me and I opened one eye ever so slightly. What I saw has stuck with me to this day.

I saw tiny black shadows, a seemingly unending number, rushing out the open doors, rushing out the open windows, even rushing up the walls to get out the windows right at the top of the hall. It was so captivating, if I wasn't scared I'd get into trouble for having my eyes open I would have watched for longer. I assumed at the time it was the negative energies being expelled.

That day just happened to be Friday the 13th and one of my church friends and I decided to go exploring the grounds after dinner. We had a quick tour during the day, but we had heard that there were horses and we wanted to go have a look at them. We walked in the general direction of where the horses were supposed to be, behind the little field meant to be a small football field. We walked up the little path leading behind the fenced field, when we saw someone walking out of the building next to the field. This wouldn't have been anything strange... If the person had walked out of a door. There was no door, the person had just walked out of the wall. A male, dressed in decent, "Sunday Best" type clothes. Completely white, from head to toe, except for a small red spot near his mouth. Kind of like he was smoking. My friend and I watched as he walked across the wide path. He stopped halfway, looked straight at us, and carried on walking. He disappeared when he got to the fence on the other side of the path.

My friend and I decided to rather go explore near the little lake that was on the property. It was a lovely little lake, with a path that led up to a gazebo on a wooded island. Beautiful. We took a stroll around when we came across something even more disturbing than the white man. Luckily being out in the open it was very dark and no one saw us. We had stumbled upon what appeared to be some kind of séance. People standing in a circle, candles, speaking in a strange language. Being petrified we didn't stay to watch that one, we didn't want to be victims to a Satanic cult, if it was that.

When we got back to the dorms there was chaos there too, one of the other girls was crying that she had seen a green man with worm/snake type hair outside her window. She was genuinely terrified, shaking and too scared to even look in the direction of her window. The counselors had to deal with her, then had to rush to the boys dorm as there was one boy seemingly possessed, ripping up the mattresses in a inhumane fit.

It was a really crazy weekend, I never went on another church camp again.

Thank you for letting me share, and I'll definitely be posting more of my experiences.

Other hauntings by LuSA

Hauntings with similar titles

Find ghost hunters and paranormal investigators from South Africa

Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, LuSA, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will read the comments and participate in the discussion.

rookdygin (24 stories) (4458 posts)
+1
9 years ago (2015-06-11)
LuSA,

Thank you for the added information...

"The church was quite fundamentalist, and the Youth group was trying to be a bit more... Funky."

Funky and Fundamentalist are not mutually exclusive... You can use modern music styles/manner of dress (with-in the 'modest' views of the church) to create intrest and then teach and practice 'old school ways'... (Example...I tend to dress a wee bit steampunk... However everything I wear conforms to the modesty standards my Church promotes... However a few people begin to ask questions about the Church becasue of the way I dress and carry myself in public... I hope that makes sense...)

With everything you experienced at this camp knowing the History of the Property may shed light one at least some of them. The experiences in the Dorms... All I can say is that there was a WHOLE LOT of teenager hormones and pubesiant energy (is pubesiant a word? 😲) for both the male and female... A lot of things could have used that energy to make things happen.

Again, Welcome to YGS. Thanks for sharing this experience with us and please, if you have others, share them as well.

Respectfully,

Rook
LuSA (2 stories) (10 posts)
+1
9 years ago (2015-06-09)
Hi Rook, thanks for your welcome!

I imagine the venue was more for like school tours, team building or maybe even weddings (with the lovely openness of it and the lake). It had an open dining area, a separate ablution block with showers and toilets, and then the dorms were in the same building as the hall. There was a little swimming pool and then the little football field. They probably rented it. And yes, it was directed at the Youth group of the church.

The church was quite fundamentalist, and the Youth group was trying to be a bit more... Funky. In house rock band playing the gospel music, etc. However there were quite a few adults on the camp as well.

With regards to the man in white, there was no obvious door on the side that this man appeared from. There was a little light outside the building, but we couldn't see a door. So there is the slight chance that there was actually a door but this man definitely disappeared once he got to the fence on the other side of the path. We didn't see him open any gate, he didn't fiddle with anything, he didn't hop over the fence, he literally disappeared before our eyes the second he reached that fence. There was open bush on the other side of the fence, no reason to go there if it was a living being.

With regards to the group in the field, could have been Voodoo, could have been sangoma gathering (in my country it's very common). We didn't want to stick around to find out exactly what it was.

There were quite a few of us in that age bracket and it was a fairly large group. The entire girls dorm was filled, I can't really remember how many boys. No children as young as 12 as the youth group was just for 13 year olds to early 20's. But definitely a lot of people my age (only a small handful older than 18, and even less older than 20).

I unfortunately can't remember anything else about the place that I can try find out about it, I can't remember the name, where it was... It's been 14 years since this happened and I didn't even look at the pamphlet properly, I had just given it straight to my father.

Thank you for taking the time to reply!
rookdygin (24 stories) (4458 posts)
+1
9 years ago (2015-06-09)
LuSA,

Welcome and well met. I have some observations and questions for you...

The area this happened at... Was it a campground that the church rented? Or more like a public park with 'event buildings' that could be rented by groups by the day or week...weekend?

First question: The church that hosted this camp... It was a Youth Camp? Anyway... The church was a fundamentalist church? A 'back to the 'old days and ways church'? It sounds like it the way you describe the cleansing prayer and ram horn blowing I could not help but to think of the 'fall of Jerico' from the bible.

I feel you are correct about what you saw... The negitive energies being pushed out of the building because of the strength of the 'good intentions and faith' of the church leaders.

As far as the Man in White goes... Not really enough information... Unless you really checked where he appeared from and determined it to be a solid wall and not an optical illusion from where you stood AND he actually vanished before your eyes rather than get obscured by the fence and whatever was around the last position you saw him.

The ritual circle you witnessed... Rather than 'satanic' could it have been VooDoo in nature? VooDoo does not equal evil... Just different...

The dorms...

If this was a Youth Camp AND some of those negitive energies lingered then I am not surprised that one girl saw something that scared her and a boy 'freaked out'...The energy levels had to be high... Well let's break it down by numbers...

How any girls were there between the ages of 12-16? How many boys in the same age range? If over 10 in both cases that is a LOT of pre-pubescent/puberty stricken boys and girls... The age most likely to experience poltergiest activity... Now if anyone... Or more of them were senitives then the energy must have been a bit overwhelming for them.

Does the camp location have any sort of history that may explain the Man in White?

Just a few things I thought of while reading your experience... Thanks for sharing.

Respectfully,

Rook
LuSA (2 stories) (10 posts)
+1
9 years ago (2015-06-09)
[at] TinAA, it happened so long ago that I can't even remember where the venue was... I actually never knew the physical address to look it up (and really, I was just so glad that the weekend was over that I didn't really think about it very much afterwards). We went to the camp as it was supposed to be a learning experience and a cleansing experience... There were activities that taught us to trust each other, activities that were related to the bible (can't remember specifics though), prayer sessions and many sessions where we cried about our hardships and unloaded, basically.
TinAA (1 stories) (84 posts)
+1
9 years ago (2015-06-09)
OMG...! 😨
It truly seems so scary. You and your fried are brave enough that you got back unharmed after witnessing that scary experience.
Well did you try to know the history of that place? Out of curiosity just want to know that for what purpose did Church took you for camp? Was that camp arranged for any special purpose?
Anyway...thanks to share
😊
LuSA (2 stories) (10 posts)
 
9 years ago (2015-06-09)
Yay! So happy this got published!
[at] bone_rose, tell me about it! I thought it would be a nice weekend with my church friends, it absolutely was not!
[at] Vasrod, I actually never thought to put the two together!
[at] RedWolf, it was a rams horn... I'm not too clued up on the Bible anymore, but I think that it has something to do with one of the scriptures. When I told my father the events of the weekend I wasn't allowed to go back to the church, he probably had the same thoughts as you. As an adult I would also have been horrified that we were exposed to such things.

Thanks for all your comments!
RedWolf (31 stories) (1292 posts)
+2
9 years ago (2015-06-08)
LuSa
Granted we live on different continents but I do not understand is the horn blowing after the prayer. Did they know the place to be haunted or that satanists were in the area? Either way it was awfully inconsiderate and down right irresponsible for them to bring children to that location.
The girl seeing the green man with worm/snake like hair, and the boy
Acting possessed and tearing up mattresses with inhuman strength should have made church people decide it was time to go home. What were they thinking?

Regards
RedWolf
Vasrod (2 stories) (11 posts)
+1
9 years ago (2015-06-08)
Perhaps all the things you saw was because of that "satanic cult" you and your friend witnessed.
bone_rose (1 stories) (14 posts)
+1
9 years ago (2015-06-08)
Church Camp never sounded so unpleasant.

Glad you seem to be okay after that experience!

To publish a comment or vote, you need to be logged in (use the login form at the top of the page). If you don't have an account, sign up, it's free!

Search this site: