CAMP CRYSTAL

Location: Camp Crystal Lake is north of Forest Green (formerly Crystal Lake), Connecticut located thirty-three miles from Fairfield on Highway 80. The camp is located at the end of a dirt road just past the cemetery on Cunningham Road.

Description: Restored in 2002, Camp Crystal Lake covers an ill-defined plot of land around a body of water known as Crystal Lake.  The camp consists of five bunkhouses, a dinner hall and boat dock amongst several cabins and deserted structures. The land includes dense forest bordered between Cunningham and Summer Roads and Highway 80 to the south and a number of private residences to the north. Crystal Lake flows south to the coast at Long Island Sound.

Ghostly Manifestations: Crystal Lake is a beautiful scenic body of water in Southern Connecticut. The townsfolk depend on tourists for its income, but between 1981 and 1990, the area was marred by a serial killer that somehow managed to avoid getting caught for almost ten years. Seemingly waning in and out of activity during that time, it practically took a covert police force of almost fifty professional lawmen to end his reign of terror. Stained by the memory of the ugly murders, the town had to wait like Amityville, New York and Plainfield, Wisconsin for their notoriety to die down. Today, as only a few of the morbidly curious come to walk the paths and footsteps of a madman, the town realizes that sometimes the dead just don’t stay buried.

“Yeah, I’ve seen stuff.” Nick Hodder is a six-foot, three-inch tall former Marine who saw a brief tour of duty during Operation Desert Storm. He’s also a Crystal Lake resident who attended the camp back when it was something. Today, he manages the grounds and a staff of eleven who when they are not seeing kids during the camping season are running a day care and even a recreation center for the area. Locals now hunt on the old paths and fishermen glide over the lake’s waters, but at night, when darkness falls, and quiet pervades the woods, all signs of civilization vanish from the area.

“I went to camp the same time as Jason Voorhees.” Hodder continues. “I remember him, but we never had an idea what he’d turn out to be.”

Hodder now lives on the restored camp site, and according to rumor, he is not alone. Locals who recall the life and times of Jason Voorhees say that his victims are restless because Jason never lived to go to trial. Others claim that the spirits are upset because they still want Christian burials. As a matter of fact, no one is sure how many bodies are still out in the woods. When the area was razed and restored, thirty seven assorted skulls, appendages, bones and assorted human remains were uncovered that ended up in a shelf somewhere to be identified. Another rumor is that like a lot of Civil War Battle Sites, the whole piece of land is one big graveyard and that the camp should never have been re-opened.

“I remember one night back in October,” Hodder recalls. “We were planning a local Halloween event and all my staff was with me in my cabin as we planned what we were doing and not doing and someone knocked at the door of the cabin. We looked at each other, opened it to see who was there and no one was there. We closed the door and went back to work and after a few minutes, it happened again. And again. Finally, we just left the door ajar and the foolishness stopped.

“One of my counselors……” Hodder twists side to side in his chair and he talks. “…said that she saw a reflection in a mirror of someone looking in her window and whirled around to catch who it was. She didn’t see anything, but she started bringing this big rottweiler with her to work. Some night the following week, she had an inescapable feeling she was being watched and opened the door for the dog to rush out and rip to bits whoever was spying on her, but it actually ran and hid under her bed. And this was a big dog. It lifted the mattress springs as it wedged underneath.”

Several stories involve strange calls in the woods. Fishermen have reported screams they dismiss as the calls of birds. One or more of the counselors have heard someone calling their names to come into the woods, especially the off the main path inaccessible parts. One witness cutting through the woods thought he heard someone walking behind him but no one was ever there we he turned around. Others have seen the shapes of people or vague glimpses of something rushing through the trees.

“Sometimes in early winter, before the snow comes,” Hodder reports. “A fog or mist appears on the lake and starts filling the woods. When it happens, visibility is almost zero and there’s this path to a nearby market. You can get lost on it and I’ve come pretty close a few times. Anyway, when you’re on it and fog has overwhelmed the woods, the trees pretty much vanish. They basically look like dark tree trunks with the tops covered in fog. Last winter, I had a guest with me and we were on that path and he said someone was following us. I called, got no response and we continued. We finally reach the cabin and, I know this sounds weird, as I turned, I saw one of the trees move. Now, maybe it was a person or a hallucination, but I know I saw something.”

Locals share ghost stories at the Crystal Falls, a local tavern, all the time trying to out spook each other.   One hunter perched in a tree and waiting for a deer heard someone walking around the base of the tree just out of sight. He never saw anyone, but he felt he was being watched. A few drivers on the dirt road into camp have reported someone running just in front of their car and very nearly getting hurt. One would-be counselor decided not to take a job at the camp after a bad scare. One person who did work for the camp snuck away from a campfire where everyone was telling ghost stories. Pulling on a Jason Voorhees mask, he was scared by someone else who stepped out of the woods and put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. As the would-be joker turned round, he had a scare of his own. The other person did not have a head.  

History: Crystal Lake is a resort community that was founded sometime in the early Nineteenth Century. Its economy is largely based on hunters, fisherman and tourists who arrive in the summer months to take advantage of the unspoiled scenery and atmosphere. The local camp was created in the 1950s, but its more notorious history begins in 1957 when eleven-year old Jason Voorhees nearly drowned in the lake due to the direct negligence of two camp counselors. (Local urban legend claims that he did drown and that his mother used occult means to bring him to life via the souls or life forces of the counselors who allowed him to drown.) She reportedly killed others to “keep” her son alive, but Jason then had to witness his own mother’s death in 1979 as she tried to kill another counselor at the then re-opened camp.  Following examples like Ed Gein and Norman Bates before he, he then started a death toll that is rumored to include over 300 people including sinking a whole ship that had left Crystal Lake for Manhattan down the coast. (This list is highly suspect because three different people have been accused of impersonating Voorhees during times he was believed to be dead. Certain “Jason” imposters include ambulance driver Roy Burns, a juvenile delinquent named Tommy Jarvis and a bounty hunter named Creighton Duke who went mad after the FBI working in tandem with the State Police killed Voorhees and accurately identified his body in 1997. Upset that he was not the one to kill Jason, Duke is believed to have impersonated Voorhees to establish the illusion that he was still alive.)

After Jason’s death in 1997, Crystal Lake had been closed for thirteen years when it was again re-opened by several former campers who remembered what it had once been like. Original plans were to develop the land, but interest turned to restoring it to what it was supposed to be. Flying in the face of its ugly past, the new owners barely acknowledge the murders nor the local ghost stories and urban legends.

Identity of Ghosts: Only about a hundred people have been killed in the direct vicinity of the camp. While only thirty-eight percent were female, the majority of the victims seem to be young adults in the 18-25 demographic.  Most of the bodies discovered were found in shallow graves or stuffed in crawlways and under floorboards.

Comments: Friday The Thirteenth (1981-1990) Topography based on North Madison, Connecticut. Hauntings based on the Devil’s Backbone Canyon, San Marcos, Texas.