20 People Share Their Favorite Creepy Campfire Story
1. Ghost Tooth Fairy
I worked as a camp counselor for a few summers and had a great signature ghost story. I don’t really remember too many of the details but the gist was there was some ghost who would kill you unless you gave him two of your teeth and told him two other names of people to kill.
It was a fine story but the real kicker came at the end of the night. When all my baby teeth had been replaced with adult teeth, two of them never came in and were missing. For a few years I had a retainer with two fake teeth to fill the gaps. Before sending the kids off to bed I would pop the retainer out in secret and give them a big old toothy smile. Scared the absolute bejeesus out of the little buggers every time.
RickyRacksICU
2. Missing Fingers
Gosh, lets see if I can recall it correctly.
There was a body of a fairly large person, once found in the woods. They were quickly killed, and there was nothing extremely off about the scene, except he had half of his pointer, ring, and pinky finger all missing from his left hand. No one could find the missing fingers, and they never found any clues. A few weeks later, another body was found, another man who was a bit smaller than the previous guy. Same situation, quickly killed, and 3 fingers missing all from the left hand, and still no clues.
A few more weeks went by, and this time it was a woman who was found, smaller than the second guy found, same fingers missing from the same hand. This went on for a while, with the victims getting smaller and smaller, until it was kids bodies being found. One teenagers body though, only had the ring finger and pinky finger removed. The police found a fingerprint at this crime scene, and they found it matched the prints from a theft record from the previous victim.
The guy telling the story then told the kids that the killer was searching to replace his fingers, and so far, he had yet to see if the fingers of children their age would fit. He then took off his glove, showing he had a scarred pointer finger and was missing half his ring and pinky finger, and then lunged at the kids while screaming.
He later told the kids he lost the two in a work accident, and doctors were able to save his very mangled pointer finger. He told this story every year at camp.
SoonToBeStardust
3. No Driver
There was a Brit who was driving through Ireland as the weather got progressively worse and day soon turned to night.
He suddenly realised that he was on the wrong road but there was nowhere to turn around – so he pressed on, barely able to see the road through the rain.
Without warning, his car just died. No battery, no engine. He assumed water must have shorted something and he’d best start walking.
He was soaking wet in a hundred yards but he continued walking.
An hour later, he heard a noise behind him and turned to see a car coming very slowly up the road behind him – its lights very dim.
As it reaches him he reaches out through the torrential rain and opens the back door and jumps in.
Shocked – He is the only person in the car. There is no-one driving and no other passengers. He freezes with fear as the car slowly continues up the road through the pouring rain.
Before long a village comes into view and the car creeps silently and slowly into the village. The Brit spies a pub so he jumps out and runs inside – not looking back!
Panting with horror – he orders a beer and sits down.
A minute later two soaking wet Irishmen come into the pub. The taller one points at the Brit and says “That’s him Paddy. That’s the bastard I saw jump out of the car we were pushing…”
shadow125
4. The Golden Arm
The golden arm, or at least the version my mom tells.
A fellow is looking to be married to one of the rich merchant’s daughters to gain the the fortune that would come with her.
Fortunately the merchant had an unmarried daughter still so the fellow begins to court her. The first thing he noticed is that she had a solid gold right arm, she apparently lost it in a childhood accident and her father had a golden arm forged for her. Seeing this as a sign of extreme wealth he continued with courting her, making her believe he truly loved her and not for her fathers money, in turn she fell deeply in love with him.
They get married and the fellow is given his riches along with part of the merchant business his now father in law owned, thus giving him more money.
However, he soon realized his wife was now of no real use, so he ignored her, gave her gifts and had dinner with her but the love he said he felt had disappeared. Angry and heartbroken the daughter accused him of marrying her for her money, in which he boldly states of course. She was furious, screaming about going to tell her father what a scoundrel he truly was and their riches would be stripped away along with his job. This angered the fellow, after all he worked so hard to get to here, he wasn’t going to let her take it away. So he pushed her down the cellar stairs and let her snap her neck on the stone.
He plead heartbroken to the grief stricken father, losing his most favorite daughter, the fellow’s riches intact. The fellow and family hold a funeral for the daughter and weep and cry.
When it was but him and his dead wife he opened the casket and pulled out a saw, for she did not need her golden arm in the grave.
That night he slept with the arm under his pillow, not wanting even the servants to see it before he melts it down into bars. He slept soundly until a voice like the wind asks
“where’s my golden arm?”
Slow and far away the voice echoed through the sleeping house, so quite he thought it was just a draft. Until the voice came again, closer and louder this time, as it down the hall,
“where’s my golden arm?”
Sitting up the fellow looked around fearfully, too scared to do anything as he hears again much closer,
“where’s my golden arm?”
He felt a heat on his back and a movement from under his pillow, but he was too scared to look away from the door as he hears again, just outside the frame the wail of
“where’s my golden arm?”
It felt like hell fire on his back as he felt the hot metal of the hand on his back, seemly crawling on its own as he watches the door knob turn.
The maid found his body that morning, face frozen in horror and hair a bright white, hands still clutching the sheets around his body. But the strangest thing was that his dead wife’s golden arm was on his chest, hand wrapped tightly around his throat.
Sorry this is long but this is the first time I’ve written this story out it’s always been verbally told:)
birdswithteeth77
5. The Man in the Corn
My family had one called ‘the man in the corn’, or ‘beans in the corn’. There was once a hobo who was stealing ears of corn from a local man’s garden. Now food was hard to come by, and someone stealing that which you’re growing was especially frustrating. The man saw the hobo in the garden and fired a shotgun shot over the hobo’s head. The next day, the hobo was back there again stealing ears of corn. The man decided he would teach the hobo a lesson so he poured all the lead shot out of his shotgun shells and filled them with small dry beans. The very next day the hobo was back in the cornfield again, and the man fired twice on the hobo, and the hobo screamed and ran down the corn rows fast pleading the whole way. The man watched for days, but the hobo was never seen again. Some days later, the man still had ‘bean shells’ in his shotgun, so he aimed at a plank of wood standing over by his well. The plank ripped to pieces!
StatOne
When the next planting seasons came, the farmer walked his corn field to its far corners, to cut corn husks and prepare to plow. Along the way, he found tiny bean plants coming up through the soil, one here, another there, all lining up to lead him to a big bunch of beans coming up along the edge of the field. When he went to exam the bunch of beans, he first saw shoes souls turned to one side, and then the outline of a body, sank in the mud and soil. He realized he had killed the hobo, and the random beans that had fallen out of his body had sprouted along the way. My Father had bought that particular farm during the war years, and he said for 20 years, random bean plants would show up in that field. Any bean plant that showed up in our garden was given the chance to grown, and one year there was a bean planted that wrapped around a corn stalk; my Father did not harvest the corn ears on that plant.
6. The Whistling Ghost
So a story I always tell around a campfire that I think is quite spooky is the legend of el silbon (the whistling ghost) it’s a Venezuelan folk tale but I have a tradition of telling it. Anyway the legend goes that on cold dark nights in remote places especially in south America a whistle can be heard coming down the road. At first it will seem loud like its right next to you but as time passes it begins to fade and get more and more quiet until its almost gone. The trick is as el silbons whistle gets louder he’s further away and when he’s right next to you the whistle is very faint and sounds like its far away. Once el silbon is at your doorstep he will sit down and begin to count the skulls of his victims and you have to listen to him count every single skull or one of your family members will die soon after and become one of his skulls. El silbon is said to dress like a farmer with a large straw hat, torn clothes, ghostly aura and a pale dead face. Its not that scary but its interesting.
flackey07
7. Escaped Mental Patient in the Woods
My drama teacher told us a version of this in high school. It’s the one where the couple are driving through the woods and hear on the radio about the escaped mental patient, then the car runs out of petrol. Man decides to walk back to a garage they saw a few miles back, claims he won’t be long. Few hours go by and he’s not back and the woman is getting sleepy. She keeps drifting off but is woken up by the rain dripping on the roof of the car and the branches scraping across it. Eventually it’s morning time and she’s woken up by the police, they ask her to get out of her car and walk towards their car but do not look back. She gets out and starts walking towards their car and they keep reminding her to not look back. Eventually curiosity gets the better of her and she turns around. Boyfriend is hung by the legs off of a tree and beheaded. The dripping was his blood and the scratches of the branches was his fingers.
Obviously our drama teacher told this very well and it scared the shit out of most the class. I think exams were over so we’d just been fucking about but he must’ve wanted some quiet time as we were pretty much silent after that.
Bob-Lowblow
8. The Random Guy
I’ve posted this before.
One year, a group of us went camping in Kearney, Ontario, where we always go camping. Whenever we go, we always form our tents in a big circle, with the fire pit in the middle of us. We’ve been drinking, smoking a few joints and a few of us were tripping balls on shrooms.
The first night we were there, this guy randomly walks into our circle, introduces himself (I can’t remember the name he gave), that he was in the military and decided to take some vacation to camp out a bit. He asked if he could join our fire, as it was getting late and he didn’t buy any firewood.
Being the friendly stoned people we are, we let him join our fire. He even pitched in some money for the firewood. The night went on and we all were having a good time. One by one, our group started heading off to bed, me being either the 2nd or 3rd. I remember waking up to the sound of someone talking and the fire being started, it was 4 in the morning. I peeped out my tent and saw the random just sitting on a log by the fire, talking to himself.
Still tripping on shrooms, I thought to myself I am in no condition to deal with this and chalked it up to me just tripping out. I wake up the next day and everyone is still alive (thankfully) and the fire is smoldering.
We look to the next campsite, where the random was staying and it was spotless, no garbage, no tracks in the trail around the site, no nothing. We all started talking about him, just to be sure we all saw him.
Through talking, we managed to figure out that he must not have slept at all, the last 2 of our group passed out just after 330am. The first person got up just after 6am and noticed he was gone.
The rest of the camping trip went well and we all went home. Fast forward maybe 4-5 years, I flip on the news and there is a picture of someone I could swear I recognize. He was arrested for a bunch of crimes, including rape and murder. Guess who it was? It was the random guy who joined our fire, I don’t know why I remembered his face, but I guess it was just a weird situation where my brain right clicked and saved as a jpeg in my brain.
Now, I have no way of proving if it was the same guy. We didn’t take any pictures of the random, but the picture jump started my memory and made me instantly remember the weird random fire joiner. Either that, or they looked identical to the same person.
Either way, was creepy.
Forkliftdriver86
9. Only Me in the Backyard
It’s pretty simple and I will not drag it out. So here it goes. One day my neighbor walked over into my backyard while I was in my garden. He looked disheveled and was wearing pajamas. When I stood up I notice his eyes were sunken in and it looked as if he lost a lot of weight. I tried to crack a joke about how this would be a great day to go down to the beach if it were not for the weather being so cold. But the joke fell flat.
A week later I bumped into his wife at the post office. She was in line in front of me mailing about a dozen packages. I asked if her husband was feeling better because he looked a bit under the weather last week when he was in my backyard. She tells me I must have been mistaken. He past away over a month ago from cancer. The packages she was mailing were his action figure toy collection she sold online.
I was speechless. Was I crazy? Maybe I did misjudge the weekend I thought I saw him. Then I really thought hard. I did not remember him saying anything to me. I did remember telling him the joke and it falling flat. I assumed I wasn’t funny and that’s why he didn’t laugh. Or maybe he couldn’t because it may have been just his spirit.
When I returned home from the post office I immediately start telling my wife about our neighbor. Before I could get out he had past away from cancer she says “Oh yeah I saw you guys talking last weekend. And then I tell her about seeing his wife at the post office and being told about his passing. So we go to our security camera. And play back the video from the week before. It’s clear in the video that I do stand up, it’s obvious I’m acknowledging the presence of someone and have a brief conversation. And then I go back to tending to my garden. But on the video the entire time I was the only person in my backyard.
BlaqSic
10. Chunk, Chunk, Chunk
A boy is walking home late at night after football practice. There is another big game playing on TV tonight, so he wants to get home ASAP. Every time he walks home from practice, the boy passes by an old misty graveyard that his mom has told him never to go through. However, passing through the graveyard is a shortcut to his house, and the boy doesn’t want to miss the game, so he hops the old rusty fence of the cemetery.
That night, the graveyard was very foggy, and the boy could barely see ahead of him. The boy was walking quickly through, when all of the sudden he falls into a unfilled grave. He lands upon an old wooden coffin with a THUD. The hole is about 8 feet deep, out of the boys reach. However, his quick wits, realize he can lean the coffin against the hole to climb out. It works just as planned.
After exiting the hole and reaching the other side of the cemetery, the boy sudden hears a loud CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK. He turns around in surprise to discover the same wooden coffin rolling toward him. Immediately scared out of his mind, the boy frantically hops the fence and sprints home. He slams the door, locks it behind him, and shuts the curtains. He doesn’t even think about the game once. The boy just sits on the couch in fear and waits. Silence.
CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK. The sound of the coffin slamming against the ground begin to grow louder and louder outside. It stopped abruptly for a moment, only to follow a large crash of the old coffin slamming through the front window. The boy screams and quickly runs up the stairs. It is pretty late, so the boys family is all asleep. He runs to his parents room and frantically turn the knob. Locked. CHUNK CHUNK. CHUNK. The coffin is somehow now halfway up the stairs behind him. Sweating and in absolute fear, the boy runs to the bathroom down the hall and locks the door behind him. He balls up in the bathtub and tries to calm down.
CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK. BOOM! The coffin breaks the door down and is within feet of the boy. Desperate and out of options, he starts throwing random toiletries at the coffin. He throws toothbrushes, and nothing happens. CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK. The Coffin rolled closer. The boy threw a box of bandages. Nothing. CHUNK. CHUNK. CHUNK. The coffin is mere inches away from the boy. Finally, the boy grabs some cough medicine, hurls it, and the coffin stopped.
SCP-079NotActually
11. Mary Sue’s Bow
This is a pretty common one but it always scared the crap out of my little cousins. Here it goes:
There once was a girl named Mary Sue. She would always wear a bow around her neck. The kids at school would always say, “Mary Sue, Mary Sue. Take off that bow will you?” But she refused.
In high school, her best friends asked her to take it off as they had gone out of fashion but Mary Sue refused.
One day Mary Sue met the man of her dreams and he asked her to take off her bow but she replied, “One day you will find out.”
Almost 60 years later, after Mary Sue’s children had grown up and moved out Mary Sue went up to her husband. “Do you want to see what is under my bow?” She asked. Her Husband put down his newspaper, “Are you sure? You’ve never taken it off.”
“I am sure my love,” Mary Sue said pulling the end of her bow. The bow fell to the ground shortly followed by her head then the rest of her body.
dobbycello
12. The Story of Sidney
There were a couple that were (as far as I know) unique to the church camp (Camp Gailor-Maxon) I went to as a kid. Though I admit it’s possible some of our stories were ubiquitous ones just adapted to the place, I don’t really know.
One of them, though, I do have firsthand knowledge about, it’s the story of Sidney.
The camp was established on an old piece of property that has been a lot of different things over the years. Back during the War, it was a girls’ boarding school. One girl who was there was deeply in love with a boy who had gone off to fight. They exchanged letters constantly, until one day the letters stopped coming. Few weeks later, she gets word that her beloved was killed in action. She was so distraught that she hanged herself in her dorm room. There’s still a placque by the door of the room in her memory.
Now, I know for a fact that room is haunted.
I stayed in that room one year when I worked for the camp. One night after lights-out, the fan came on by itself. It started spinning faster and faster until it started wobbling really hard, acting like it’s about to fall off. I knew the stories, so I shouted, “Stop it, Sidney! I’m a friend!”
Fan immediately stopped. Like… Not just slowed down and came to an eventual stop. It’s like someone grabbed the fan blades and STOPPED it.
Berek2501
13. He’s in the Photos
I love this one short and just creepy enough:
I had a roommate/friend of mine in college decided one summer to solo hike through a bunch of Colorado. He’s kinda odd. He’s one of those kinda people that automatically thinks old stuff is better, that will only takes photos on film, and has a ridiculous record collection. But he’s also pretty experienced camper so no one was very worried about him. It’s kinda a “soul searching” thing for him. But anyway, he goes off for two month and he comes back and he’s telling me about his trip. “It was amazing… just out in nature… so many stars” that kind of stuff. And also, “there were a couple days I felt like I was being watched, but I never met anyone on the trail. Super weird. I even thought I saw someone, but nope” A couple days later he gets his photos from the local film developer he uses. And he gets back to the apartment and shows me the photos like he always does, but he seems… off? I’m looking through the photos, and there are beautiful landscapes, his camp set up, his breakfast, and then right in the middle of their are 4 photos of him in his sleeping bag… sleeping.
TheCmar7
14. Taking the Appearance of Other Women
I hope I recall correctly. I’ll summarize:
There’s this creature who follows people around and takes the appearance of other women in large groups. When she gets one man alone she’ll come up close to him and get cozy. At that time she’ll pick him as her prey and make sure to stay nearby. When everyone retires to bed she’ll sneak into his tent/cabin and kill him.
When I tell this story I’ll pick a moment to stop, step away to grab something or excuse myself to the bathroom, and come back. I’ll make it a point to sit closer than I did before to some designated male. Occasionally if he’s in on the joke with me, he’ll wake up at some random time to scream as loud as humanly possible. It’ll always be over something rly arbitrary like a thing looking like a snake, or a night terror. Usually I’ll be running that skit solo, and the eeriness of such a simple sequence of actions is usually enough to put everyone on edge.
rzrbladess
15. Too Close to the Campfire
For context, I was camping with my cousins and it was almost like 11 at night. It was very cold and most people had gone to sleep, so there were only a few of us (around 5) left outside. Since it was so cold, we all scooted our chairs as close as could to the fire.
Anyways, I don’t remember the entire story that was told but it was about a group of people who were sitting so close to the fire that they fell in and burned to their death.
Now that I write it out it doesn’t seem that bad, but at the time, it caused an unusually very eerie silence among us for a good couple of seconds, which was weird since we were talking all night until that point. The only sound we could hear was from the cackling of the firewood. And it definitely made all of us scoot our chairs a bit back.
bbestcookie
16. Cat-Man
I was on a camping trip with some friends who had a bunch of kids. The parents only wanted to drink and whatnot so I took it upon myself to tell stories at the campfire. I made up some story about a cat-man who was shunned from the city because he was a cat-man. Half cat, half man. I told them if they heard crackling leaves or twigs behind them that it was probably the cat-man. About an hour after the story was told, the kids were in tents and one of the adults had tripped on something in the dark and made a loud noise. From one of the tents, one of the little girls screams out in horror, “CAT-MAN!!!”
The parents all slowly turned and glared at me for putting that in their heads.
That’s what you get for ignoring your own offspring and leaving them with a fiction writer.
stat1stick
17. Emergency Siren
Only creepy from my own perspective, but honestly kind of funny.
I moved to Washington state a year ago, and had two of my best friends come visit for the first time. We rented a cabin in the north Cascades, and though I usually don’t smoke, my friends do to manage their anxiety and I thought, “Why not?”
Well, about 9pm sitting around the fire we hear a siren going off. Now, the guys had talked to the host and asked about the siren earlier on, and were told that apparently it’s connected to a fire station and they turn it on for everything from small fires, to the dam breaking. They were also told that it doubled as a P.A. system, so that if there was any imminent danger they’d make an actual announcement.
Here I am though, pleasantly stoned, and I slowly realize what I’m hearing. My friend explained what he was told earlier, but my brain zeroed in on “dam breaking”. It took a good ten minutes for me to understand that we weren’t just sitting there ignoring an emergency siren.
DinklyFinker
18. Girl Scout Camp
I am going to set the scene first. We are at my girl scout camp. This year, my troop was placed in the camping section furthest away from the entrance, deep in the woods. There is a clearing and large field behind the camping section.
My troop leader points to the clearing and field. She asks if we knew what building once stood in the field. We all said no and she explains it was an insane asylum. “It burnt down many years ago…” She explains. “While it was on fire, many of the patients escaped. Some were found…” She puts her head down…”And some were never found. They suspect they…well….still roam the camp grounds.”
Everything pauses for a second.
All of a sudden, my troop heard running in the woods followed by voices. Banging on the main cabin too. My troop leader lifts her head back up and asks “Do you know what the patients liked most ?” The troop in unison said “No.”
She screams and lunges at us “LITTLE GIRLS !!!!” and another troop leader darts out of the woods scaring the crap out of us.
Shout out to my fellow girl scouts 🙂 I hope ya’ll are well.
High-Waters
19. Left Hands
This one came from my grandpa, and I’ve told it to many at girl scout camp. Also fair warning, it’s a bit gory.
“It was a calm and quiet night. The fog was thick and it was a new moon. A young girl stood in the middle of a clearing surrounded by thousands of trees in every direction. The girl had run away from home in the dead of night. As far as she knew she was all alone. She layed down to rest, but someone, something, was watching… Her screams could be heard throughout the entire wood as she was brutally mauled by a rabbit wolf. The last thing she saw as the life drained from her eyes was the ravenous gaze of the wolf.
The next day her parents searched far and wide for the young girl, but all they found was her mangled nightgown and her left hand. The two were devastated, and they locked themselves in their cabin for weeks. After a month had passed their neighbor decided to check on them. However, nobody was there, but there was one thing that made his stomach turn. On the dining room was the severed left hands of the girl’s parents.
Two days later the neighbor disappeared as well, and his left hand showed up on his doorstep. One by one the rest of the village went missing, and all that remained of the people that once lived there was a bunch of severed left hands…”
As a bonus, you can leave the fire before the rest of the group, and leave a fake left hand (I got mine from a Halloween store) at the the entrance to your cabin/tent before going and hiding nearby. Then wait for the inevitable chaos and panic.
Edit: I changed the formatting a bit.
Enbie-In-The-Corner
20. Room 103
Me and my wife have a knack for going off the beaten path when we travel.
One night while on our way to see family in New England, we find a cute town not too far from the highway to rest for the night. Of course, we choose the local inn rather than a hotel chain.
As we step into the inn, I see some flyers for local trails and points of interest, I also see a flyer titled “come visit the haunted Hill Farm Inn”, which was the Inn we were staying in.
I jokingly ask reception about the “haunting”. She claimed the haunted room was room 103, but that they didn’t rent out that room anymore. Too many complaints, nightmares, early check-outs and even some physical injury that caused some legal concern for the establishment.
I assume it’s all to draw business. We grab our room’s old style-skeleton key and head down the hallway to our room. My wife points out along the way “look honey, it’s room 103!” Of course we can’t get in or anything, but I decided to look through the key hole and found… red. Nothing but the color red. Not necessarily a “crimson” red, a little darker than that. I stood up, shrugged, and off we went onto our room. Slept well, and checked out the next morning.
While we were checking out, I asked “so what’s supposed to be in room 103? Some kind of ghost?”
excusetheblood
The receptionist replied: “the ghost of a young woman haunts that room. The story is that when she reveals herself, she floats, wears a colonial-style nightgown, has straight black hair, and deep red eyes.”