21 Nov I Survived A Summer Camp Massacre In 1984

Earlier today, I looked in the mirror and saw the scars from that awful day. I turned my hand in various directions, the scar shimmering in the bathroom light. The events from this day still haunt me. No matter how much therapy, even if I took all the drugs in the world, I can’t escape the memories. Lately, it’s been making a comeback on social media, so I decided to come out of hiding to tell the tale for the first and last time.

I’ll start at the beginning – the very beginning of how I came to be at that camp in the summer of 1984.

My parents weren’t the best people in the world. They had too many kids and too many demons that kept them preoccupied instead of caring for us. We were taken by the state when I was five years old. All the memories I have of living with them included some level of abuse that most people find difficult to believe.

I can barely remember them now. Once I was moved into the state facility, I thought about them every second of the day for the first year or so.

“When are mommy and daddy coming to get me?”

“Where are my brothers and sisters?”

“I want to go home.”

Thoughts like that repeated in my head on a constant loop. I couldn’t sleep due to the nightmares of being taken by strangers and whisked away in a police car. Back then, we didn’t get therapy or counseling. We were left to fight our problems on our own. It was taboo to even talk about it with the other kids. If you did, you’d be scolded by one of the caretakers.

My only distraction was watching replays of old cartoons from one of the three local TV stations that we could get on the rabbit ears planted on top of the 19-inch beast of a black-and-white television. McLeod’s Home of Hope wasn’t the worst place in the world, but it certainly wasn’t the best. Growing up in a home where you were malnourished so your parents could afford beer was definitely worse.

During the summer of 1984, I had turned sixteen that May. Birthdays at the facility were nothing more than a mention from the head caretaker, an old gray-haired lady that we older kids had nicknamed Torpedo Tits because her large, protruding boobs. Torpedo Tits craved power and loved to use that authority on us unfortunates.

She would take away toys and activities for the smallest of mistakes. If she came to check your bed and there was even one wrinkle – there went your outside privilege.

If you left even a spoonful of food on your plate during any of your meals, there went your reading time before bed.

If you got into an argument with another kid, you’d spend the next week on cleaning duty.

Once we reached puberty, the boys and girls were separated into different sections of the building, never allowed to interact. One day, when I was on cleaning duty, I punched a kid who got into an argument with me over chores. That kid then decided it was okay to call me a bastard, a word that he knew would instantly send me into a violent spiral. I splattered his nose with a punch that Muhammad Ali would’ve been proud of.

I took that punishment with pride.

They gave me one of those gigantic mops that you see janitors using in office buildings and told me to clean every inch of that momentous hallway by myself. I was lost in a daydream when I heard a voice call out.

“Hey! You! Where is Mrs. Norris’s room?”

I looked up and saw a red-haired girl about ten feet in front of me. She had walked around the corner and paused by the bend. She wore a green t-shirt with a local mascot of a turtle, and her hair was pushed back by a purple headband. I was smitten immediately. My brain turned to ooze, barely able to form a word, let alone a sentence.

“I… uh…. Yeah… she… there…” awkwardly pointing around in an arc, nearly tripping over my own feet as I twisted around.

She laughed. Not a chuckle, but an amusing, hearty laugh. My heart was shattered. The instant reaction to cry was difficult to suppress, taking everything within me to hold back, but at the same time, it still raced. She walked halfway down, turned, and looked at me. She flashed a flirty smile and then dipped into my classroom. A few seconds later, she emerged and trotted toward me with her hands behind her back.

She leaned close, her mouth just inches from my ear. Her hot breath steaming my ear, “Goodbye, Janitor Boy,” she whispered and then trotted down the hall.

It was official – I had been stricken by Cupid’s arrow. No, not just one arrow, the entire quiver had punctured deep into my young heart.

After finishing my mopping duty, Torpedo Tits informed us that the state government had started a new program for us strays. They would pay for us to spend three weeks at a summer camp each year going forward. We could go only if the facilities approved. The state specifically did not want troublemakers, ne’er-do-wells, or delinquent children, but this was meant to be a reward for those who were well-behaved, or so she told us.

The camp began a month later, and boy did Torpedo Tits use it as a new tool of control.

“Do your chores, or no summer camp!”

“Make your bed or you’ll spend the rest of summer with me!”

“Do you want to go to camp? Then listen to me!”

This went on and on until the day before we left. Before we went to sleep, we had a meeting in the den area. Old Torpedo Tits stood before us, clipboard in hand, and a smirk spread wide across her ugly face.

“Well, children, the attendants for the trip to Camp Chattahoochee have been decided. I will read off the names of those going, and the rest will be doing extra work here so they can become good, productive young men in the world.”

She cleared her breath with a phlegmy cough that only cigarette smokers can achieve, something akin to an old car trying to start on a cold morning.

“Adam. Bryce. Charlie. Denver. Forrest. Henry. Michael. Nathan. Thomas. And finally… Wyatt,” she stared at me, her eyes looking angry, as if she wasn’t happy that I was chosen.

Hearing my name, dragged out and spat with vile, somehow made me happy. I had worked hard to be good for the last several weeks, even volunteering to do extra duty when Henry had twisted his ankle outside.

We were told to go to bed, but as I turned to leave, a hand clamped on my shoulder.

“If I hear so much as a tardy from you, or the smallest slight, I will march over to that camp and kick your ass all the way back here. You got me, Wyatt? I want none of your bullshit on this trip. You will make a good example out of McLeod’s Home, you got me?”

“Yes ma’am,” came out of my mouth with the practiced cadence of either a kid who had been beaten to obedience, or someone fresh out of boot camp.

The bus rolled in front of the building at 5 am the next day. My belongings were few, consisting of a few pairs of clothes and some novels that I had borrowed from the library. All of this was crammed into my newly-provided canvas backpack. I climbed onto that bus and saw that it was already crammed near its limit with other kids.

There was a seat open near the front; the cool and obnoxious kids had amassed in the back to cause their ruckus, which had already begun and was escalating. A few moments later, I saw a glint of red hair sit down next to me.

“Janitor Boy?”

“Umm, yeah? Hi,” was the best thing I could think of to reply with.

“I’m Sadie, by the way,” her smile spreading across her face, lifting her eyes in a way I can never forget.

“Wyatt,” I said, sticking my shaking, sweaty hand out as if I were a new politician.

She looked at it for a moment, and then shook it – a giggle followed. Her hand was small and soft, something that nearly startled me, but I found it alluring.

We talked the entire three-hour trip. Her story was very similar to my own. I hadn’t been able to speak much to the other kids about theirs, but I realized that more than likely, theirs was too. All of us had probably come from broken homes, shattered by abuse and addiction. Some of us kids took that pain in stride, while others sought to relieve it by being horrible to the others. I did a third option – I bottled it in and pretended as if it didn’t exist.

Sadie and I ignored everyone around us. To us, we were the only ones on that bus that day. Nobody else mattered. I saw a sparkle in her eye, and I’m sure she saw it in mine as well. Near the end of the trip, I worked up the nerve to put my clammy hand on her knee, and she placed her hand on mine.

I smiled, a real one, for the first time in years.

The bus’s air brakes screamed as it came to a halt. The stop was barely big enough for the bus. It was surrounded by various flora that were chest height. we were split into two groups. The boys went to the right, the girls to the left. We were told that we were not allowed to co-mingle in any way until it was time to leave. My heart sank, a rock falling into my stomach. I nearly cried as we waved goodbye. Sadie appeared to be just as glum as I was. I stood there and watched until I could no longer see her red hair shining in the summer sun.

Someone blew a whistle behind me, and thanks to years of training with Torpedo Tits, I turned and halted at attention like a good little soldier.

“Good afternoon, runts. My name is Darryl, and I am the camp manager for the next three weeks. My first rule is, don’t cross me. I won’t tolerate any disobedience in my group, and if you do, you will face punishments. First, you will lose your activity privilege for a day. For the second offense, you will be on cleaning duty for a day, and yes, that includes the shithouses. For your third offense, I will call your school or parents and have your delinquent ass sent home. Is that clear?”

Darryl was a tall, slightly overweight guy with a mullet reaching halfway to his ass. He had this awful tattoo of a naked lady on his right forearm that could’ve been drawn better by a blind person. As soon as I saw him, I knew I wouldn’t like him. I thought I’d get away from power-hungry dictators on this trip. I found myself wishing I were at the home instead.

“Like mud, sir!” Some stupid kid behind decided to retort with.

A few kids chuckled, but the rest of us turned around to watch the drama unfold.

Darryl looked around, spotted the offending kid, and began marching at a quickened pace, “Oh, so we have a joker amongst the crowd, eh?”

The kid simply stood there grinning, looking around for his friends; they were offering no support, but backed away from him. You could see the distress grow across his face in the seconds following.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“L-Leon.”

“Well, little ‘Leon’, for that little infraction, instead of going around to meet each instructor and having fun today, once you move to your assigned cabin, stay there. You can watch everyone else have fun from the window.” He did a sloppy about-face and barked, “As for the rest of you, march down the hill to where the flag pole is. We’ll divvy you up to your cabins from there!”

Once we met the cabin leader, we were told that we had one hour to unpack and chat with each other. The kid sharing my bunk was named Donny. Donny was a quiet African-American kid who constantly clenched his jaw. It made him appear as if he were either about to cry or beat your ass at any moment. It didn’t take a genius, definitely not me, to determine that he had endured awful abuse in his life, and it was best not to pry it out of him.

Adam and Henry from my school were also in my group, and they immediately decided to bunk together. Neither one of them ever said much to me, and I did the same to them.

There were two other kids in our group. One was named Tad, and the other Winston – both were rich kids who very clearly did not want to be there. They complained the entire time we unpacked about every aspect of the cabin and the camp. Nothing here was up to their lifestyle, and they, very loudly, complained that they weren’t allowed to leave voluntarily.

My only option for a friend was a kid with a short fuse, or nobody at all. It made me miss Sadie even more.

I felt sullen then; the air had been sucked out of my sails, a sucker punch to the nads. I found myself thinking about how much I’d rather be on that bus, holding Sadie’s hand again, talking about anything and everything as the world rolled by.

For that first day, we had to work in groups with kids from the other three cabins. Arts and crafts was the first stop, where I made a God’s Eye from popsicle sticks and yarn. After that was a lunch of bologna sandwiches with boxed mac and cheese. Lunchtime was an hour long; I spent that time alone, nobody would even approach me, as if I were diseased. Then they told us it was time for a swim in the nearby lake.

By the edge of the lake, they had built a boat launch. There was also a dock that had diving boards. We all had a blast. I even felt as if I might’ve made a few friends, but I never got their names. We just had fun roughhousing and staying anonymous. I was floating around the lake after doing a rather impressive cannonball and now feeling rather tired, I looked across the lake and saw that the girls were doing the same. I scanned around, trying to catch a glimpse of that beautiful red hair, but before I could, someone else dove in and covered my head in water.

Later that day, we had what they deemed as “free time”. We could participate in any of the designated activities, except ones that required supervision, but we also had the option to hike one of the many trails, as long as we let someone know.

I wanted to hike. Nobody else seemed to want to. Lots of other people had flocked over to archery and woodworking, but I didn’t see anyone else head for the forest. Darryl was supervising the woodworking area, barking instructions and warnings as a drill sergeant would.

“Careful! Watch your damn hands! You don’t want to lose your jackin’ off hand, do you?”

He saw me coming and turned toward me, “’ Sup, little dude? You want to learn how to make somethin’? It could be your career one day.”

“No. I was actually wanting to go for a hike. I’ve never been in a forest before.”

“Oh!” Then he thought for a second. “Oh, shit! I need to find you a buddy then.”

He looked around and found a fit, older guy and gave out a whistle.

“Juan! Come over here! I need you to show this little dude around the Rattler Trail. Show him all the plants and lizards and shit. I know you’re good with that.”

“Yes, sir,” was all Juan said before he started walking toward the woods.

I followed in hot pursuit.

When I first saw Juan, I made the mistake of thinking he was just another macho jock douchebag, but as we walked into the woods, he started to lighten up.

“Don’t worry about Darryl. He’s a hard ass, but he means well. He’s actually a good camp manager. He won’t let anybody get by with being a jerk for too long. He sent a kid home earlier for dropping a racial slur on a kid named Donny, but that was after Donny bloodied his nose.” He laughed, and I joined him.

Juan wore cut-off jean shorts and a black Bark At The Moon 1983 Tour sleeveless shirt that looked practically new. Ozzy looked menacing in his werewolf getup. Cable TV was strictly forbidden, and so we were forced to use rabbit ears. We only had the four local channels to watch, and that meant no MTV. We were rarely allowed to leave the premises, so it was shocking for me to hear Ozzy Osbourne blasting from a kid’s stereo on that bus ride to the camp.

Juan himself was not menacing. He was a kind, welcoming older kid, which was something I had not experienced there yet.

“These other guys, most of them come from bad homes. They think being assholes gives them control over the chaos. My mother would beat us with the chancla if I treated my siblings how they do,” he said as we made our way up the ridge, far from the other kids.

When we reached the summit of the trail a couple of hours later, the other kids were just ants, but Juan and I stood high above them all, like we were the kings looking down on our lowly subjects. I watched the ant-people move about, and for the first time in my life, I felt brimming with joy.

After a while, Juan gently put his hand on my shoulder and said it was time to head back down. Dusk would arrive before us if we didn’t hurry.

“I hope you learned a few things today. Not just plants and animals, but a few life lessons too.”

“I definitely have. Thank you for this, Juan.”

About halfway down the trail, Juan stopped me. The sun had dipped behind the hills, and we were left with barely enough light to make it back.

“Shh,” Juan’s finger was raised, held in my direction.

I looked around, fear was trying to take the wheel and telling me to run.

“Look. There’s a tent tucked back in those trees,” he whispered. His voice shaking, on the verge of exploding into a panicked scream.

“A tent?”

“Yeah. I didn’t see it on our way up. Nobody is supposed to be on this property but us with the camp.”

“Does it look like someone is there?”

“I can’t see from here…”

Something pierced the back of his head, blood spurting out of the wound, through his long hair, and down that awesome Ozzy shirt. He fell backward to the ground and never spoke again. His head rolled as he did so, and that was when I could tell it was an arrow. His body began to convulse, blood pouring from his mouth.

“Juan! Juan!”

At first, I tried to help him, but it became obvious very quickly that there was no helping him.

THUMP.

An arrow struck a nearby tree trunk nearly as soon as I started running.

THUMP.

Another one barely missed me, but sliced open my calf. I didn’t even realize it happened until my socks started feeling wet. When I made it to the campgrounds, another arrow fired, striking me between the shoulder blades.

“Yo! What the fuck…? Wait… who the fuck is that?” Darryl yelled, running toward me, but stopped once he saw the man behind me. He took a few steps back, his face covered in sheer terror, as he bolted in the other direction, leaving me bleeding on the ground.

The man stepped over me as he made his way toward the camp. The other kids had broken out into complete pandemonium. Kids were running everywhere, doors were slamming closed, then open again, then closed. Some kids even fled out on the water in kayaks. Meanwhile, I see this massive man wearing tattered jeans and an old leather jacket, his face obscured by a camouflaged hunting mask with wild brown hair.

I hear someone yelling as loud as possible, in some cheap imitation of a warrior yell, and see the six-foot-tall, two-hundred-fiftyish pounds Darryl rushing at the masked man. In his hands, he held the wood chopping ax, raised above his head for a deadly strike. The masked man simply bent down, did a football tackle into Darryl’s mid-section, and sent him down hard. The masked man removed a Bowie knife from somewhere on him and slit open Darryl’s throat. All I could hear was the sound of him drowning in his own blood and the eerie quiet once that had stopped.

In the distance, I could see Tad frozen in place. I guess he hadn’t made it into a cabin soon enough. He thumped to the ground after an arrow punctured his eye, the arrow tip exiting a few inches through the skull, his long blonde hair billowed out as I watched him collapse in slow motion. I saw the man skulking away, heading toward a cabin closer to the lake.

Once I had some distance between us, I summoned enough strength within me to stand up and trot over to a cabin. Trot was being a generous term; it was more like a fast hobble. The kids inside were gracious enough to let me in, barring it shut with an iron fire poker. Inside, I saw that Donny was part of the group. He was standing by a window, jaw and fists clenched, ready for combat.

Outside that window, we heard more screaming. We watched in horror as a head rolled toward our cabin and bounced off the wall, stopping facedown about a foot away. I realized in horror that it was the head of Adam, my schoolmate. Adam had distinct red hair and freckles. It couldn’t have been anybody else.

The giant man stood in the entrance, bloody machete in hand, his chest heaving as he stood stoically. He appeared to be contemplating, or waiting for something. The kids from that cabin had scattered into the woods to escape. It wasn’t long before we heard screaming coming from there, too. I found out later that the crazy man had set dozens of traps, some were pitfalls, some were hidden mechanisms that would fire arrows at neck-height, and some were animal traps that would burrow into your ankle, severing tendons and causing possible exsanguination before help would arrive.

Most of the kids from that cabin were found dead in these traps. Only three escaped. They were too afraid to turn around and help the others. People were outraged and blamed them for the deaths, but they weren’t there. They didn’t experience what we did.

The man came to my cabin next. He dropped the machete and retrieved the wood chopping ax that Darryl had dropped after his maniacal attempt at heroism. The first chop scared me so much that I fell to the floor. My pants were now wet. Each chop sent the cabin into an even bigger panic. Soon, kids were breaking out the windows to get out.

The first one to escape through the right window got an ax to the head. Everyone immediately opted for the left window, causing twelve kids to try to cram out that window at the same time. Two kids died from severed arteries on the broken shards of glass attached to the sill during the scuffle to get out. It didn’t take long for the man to make his way to that side of the cabin.

Three deaths at his hands, we realized it was hopeless. The door was splintered, but held together by that fire poker. After the screams of the third kid had finally stopped, an idea I had earlier seemed like the only hope I had for escape.

Before that man made his way back to the door for the finale of his brutal assault on the remnants, the iron fire poker still sat firmly in place. With everything left in me, I bolted. It was jammed, pressured into position by the busted wood.

I yanked.

I yanked.

I yanked again.

Next to me, I saw Donny had joined me. With both of us pulling, the poker started to finally wiggle free. Just a little at first, then it moved a couple of inches.

The ax clipped my hand, slicing through the flesh. Pain flared from there through my body, nearly sending me backward in shock, but not before I gave the poker one last hard tug.

I fell, landing hard on my butt; the fire poker landed on my lap. The door exploded into three chunks, one hanging awkwardly off the hinges. The man pushed his way in, freezing in the doorway.

This was my only chance.

I knew I only had a few seconds to react.

From my peripheral vision, I saw Donny move closer and yell, “Hey, you!” The man turned to look, and Donny, in all his teenage glory, punched the man square on the nose with the skill of a Golden Gloves boxer. The man staggered, dropping to one knee.

This gave me the opportunity I needed.

I stood up, and in one quick, adrenaline-fueled, survival instinct-controlled motion, I rammed the three-foot piece of metal into his right eye socket.

Now it was his turn to scream.

He dropped the ax, shakily grabbing the fire poker as he fell to his knees. Donny grabbed the ax and split his skull down to his nose. Blood and brains had splashed back on me.

The other kids rushed around Donny and me, running around the fallen, bleeding out, monster of a human being. When they realized the man had destroyed the phone lines, they decided to run for the road to find help. A group of them flagged down a truck driver, who escorted them to a nearby country gas station.

When the police finally arrived, they found me standing above the man, a statue covered in gore. I don’t remember this or anything that happened for a long while. I know that I was hospitalized for my wounds, spent time in therapy, and learned that Donny and I were being called heroes by the media.

Twenty-one kids died that day, and another eleven were injured in a variety of ways. After taking the advice of my psychiatrist, I didn’t attend any of the funerals. He thought I couldn’t take that mental load, and I agree with him.

Surprisingly, once I returned to the state home, Torpedo Tits was relatively nice to me the rest of the time I was there. I found out that three from my class didn’t make it back. Henry died at the hands of the man, while two others, Charlie and Denver, died in the traps. Much of my remaining time there is vague in my memory, but I don’t recall her power trips being as frequent.

The only person from that camp I kept in contact with was Sadie. She came to visit me in the hospital and never left my side. If I needed anything, she’d get a nurse or fetch it herself. Our first kiss was actually while I was there. She has filled in a lot of the gaps for me for this telling. After graduating and getting an apartment, Sadie moved in, and we were married three days later. I don’t recommend moving that quickly, but sometimes, you just know when they’re the right person.

Sadie told me that the man was an escaped inmate from a local asylum. He had been missing for five years. His name was Miles Purdy. Mile was in the asylum after murdering his entire family on their farm in the middle of the night. He claimed not to remember anything about those events. Not long after he was committed, though, he never spoke again. He’d barely respond at all, mostly just nodding or making hand gestures if he would.

Miles escaped by choking a worker with a towel he had taken from the laundry room, then he just walked out the exit and wasn’t seen again until that day at the camp. She found out that the camp had just opened, and none of the workers had reported seeing him or even knowing he was nearby.

The police also found the remains of several other people at Miles’s makeshift home; most of them were women. These were not buried, no, pieces of them he had kept in a box. You can guess at what he was probably doing with them. The police determined he hadn’t been at that particular spot for very long. Maybe he moved whenever he was in danger of being found, but then that raises the question of why attack the camp?

Sadie and I recently celebrated an anniversary when she brought up the topic for the first time in at least twenty years.

I hadn’t even told my kids the full story, but I decided that I would before I published this. All that I’ve told them up to this point is that I witnessed something very bad when I was a teenager. After the incident, I had my name changed. I assume Donny also did because I haven’t heard anything about him in the media, or from him at all, since the incident. I know that I didn’t want to be tied to that event anymore and wanted to wash my hands of it, burying it in the past where it would remain until now; maybe Donny thought the same.

However, something happened recently that made me decide that’s no longer a reasonable option.

The nightmares of that day persist. Sometimes they’ll go away for a few months, and then other times, they happen nightly. In those dreams, I’m usually back at that camp, but this time, it’s me who’s the killer. I’m the one shooting arrows and chopping up the attending kids.

It was several months ago that the sleepwalking started. I woke up one night, standing in our backyard, completely naked and wet from the evening dew. The next time it happened, I woke up standing by the front door, the largest of our kitchen knives gripped tight in my fist. That night, I was having one of those dreams where I was the killer at the camp. I dropped the knife, shaking, terrified of what was happening.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My therapist thinks it’s the trauma resurfacing. Internally, I have felt very off. Something is wrong with me, and I don’t know what it is. My anger has been far worse than normal. I’ve been yelling and throwing things whenever I get slightly upset. Overall, I feel uneasy – it’s a feeling of dread, that something is going to happen that I can’t stop.

I’m really worried that one day, things will go too far. I’m worried that I will hurt someone that I love. I’m worried that I’ll become the next Miles Purdy.