A camp counselor describes an urban legend connected to the nearby woods. It is said that Hellhounds would drive out unfaithful suitors if they entered the location. Maybe there was some truth to the story.
I received the following account:
"I have a story that has creeped me out since it happened, some nights I’ll think about it and not be able to sleep.
I’ll set the scene. It was the summer of 2011 and I was a camp counselor at a small, private college that sponsors ACT classes for high school students. At this camp, six other college students and I mentored, tutored, and, in a sense, babysat, over 50 high school students who would stay on the college campus and sleep in the college dorms for 6 weeks. It was always tough, but it was always rewarding.
2011 was my second year working at this ACT camp, and I had started a relationship with one of the other college students. We’d stay up every night after the high school students went to bed and we’d explore the campus. Sneaking into the college chapel at midnight, taking walks at their small lake and forest, and spending late nights in the courtyard. I want to mention this is one of the oldest colleges in one of the oldest towns in Arkansas. They even have a cabin built in the 1800s still standing.
My new girlfriend told me a story around the end of June about the small lake and forest where we’d sometimes take our late-night walks. She told me in the 1980’s there was a girl who went to college who loved a boy, and he said he loved her, but he cheated on the girl, and when she confronted him, he was able to convince all his friends and most of campus to bully her. They didn’t know she was a Wiccan and regularly practiced witchcraft. The girl ran off into the woods by the lake after being bullied one evening and didn’t come back until the next morning. The day she came back she was able to convince the boy she had loved to follow her back to the woods the next night. He followed her into the woods until she disappeared in the dark, and he got lost. Then he heard growling and barking and snarling, and the noises chased him into a clearing with strange symbols out of burnt limbs on the ground, and the girl’s body hanging from a tree. Then the barking and snarling chased him out of the forest. And the urban legend continues now, if a girl brings her boyfriend to the woods, and the Hellhounds sense he is unfaithful or his intentions are not pure, they’ll chase him out of the forest, and this was the girl’s final act of protecting other girls from unfaithful boys.
Of course, we had to check it out together. She and I went out to the woods by the lake around midnight, and from the asphalt trail circling the lake, we found a dirt trail leading into the woods. We didn’t have flashlights, so we used our lights on our smartphones. We climbed down a small hill into the trees, and exactly when we walked on even ground, our smartphone lights started flashing. The flashlight was flashing on and off, and the home screen was also flashing on and off with no lock screen. I have no idea how it was possible. When we rushed back up on the asphalt trail, the flashing stopped, and we looked at our phones confused. I had to climb down a second time, even though, she didn’t want to do it again, because I needed to test that it wasn’t a fluke or coincidence. When I hit even ground again, my phone flashed exactly the same as before, and then I climbed back out. She wanted to leave, and I agreed. I had never known smartphones to act that way before, and I have never been able to recreate it since.
After years of watching ghost-hunting shows, I was very familiar with the theory of ghosts and other spirits absorbing electricity and power from batteries for their own energy. If there is another reason, I’d love for someone to tell me why our smartphones acted so weird.
The camp ended, and summer did as well, and school was starting back. I went back to my state school. I was never unfaithful or anything to my girlfriend from that summer, but I discovered by Thanksgiving in 2011, after we had ended the relationship, that she had been unfaithful and her intentions had not been that pure. Now I know why she didn’t want to go back a second time.
I know it’s no dark figure or cold touch, but this is my ghost story, and thank you for reading." S
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