The scariest camping experience I have ever had
Content warning: graphic imagery
I have camped a lot in my life, especially in the last year since I moved full time into my campervan. Free campgrounds, paid campgrounds, national parks, state parks, county parks, in cities, rural areas, desert, forest... you name it. But my recent camping experience was unlike anything I have ever experienced and it shook me.
A few weeks ago we had a hard time travel day, the kind of day where nothing goes right. The first campground we went to didn't work out and errands took so long that by the time we got to our second choice campground, an hour outside of town, it was dark and I was so tired. The reviews online had said there were some people who looked like they lived there so seeing them at the campground didn't phase us. The heaping piles of trash in the campfire rings made things feel a little less safe but it was so late we decided to stay the night and see how we felt in the morning. Looking back, that was our first mistake.
When we woke up, I pulled back the window curtain and was instantly struck by the deep orange and bright yellow trees surrounding us. A quiet creek, birds chirping, leaves falling, everything felt better in the daylight. We decided to stay for a week and a half and called the ranger to make the reservations. There were a few other people but they were far away and seemed to not have much interest in us so we felt safe.
A few days into our stay a van like ours pulled into the spot next to us late one night. The next day the person was gone and they came back with another car so we assumed there were two people staying at the campsite. On the second full day they were there, it seemed like they were having car trouble. The hoods on both their cars were up and someone came to visit them, I assumed to help with the cars. They were also wearing an orange, reflective vest so I remember thinking that they might have worked in construction. I don't know, I guess my brain was just trying to make sense of a situation I didn't really understand. At one point, they walked past our van dragging behind them a string with a piece of metal attached, the metal clanking on the gravel road as they passed, eyes on the ground in front of them. I thought it was odd, but that maybe they were just having a bad day with their presumed car trouble, we all do things out of frustration, right? It didn't seem like they had any interest in me, they didn't talk to me or even look at me when they passed our van so I just let it go and Patrick and I drove into town to get groceries and go to the library.
Our campsite at Winston Creek Campground in Mossyrock, WA
We got back to the campground from being in town late, around 10pm, and saw our neighbor had green and red LED lights coming from their van, but again didn't think much of it , everyone has their things and who am I to judge, right? They stayed up late that night outside by a campfire. It was so cold, I remember thinking they must have been so cold being outside at 2am.
We slept in the next morning. I was having a bad mental health day (I wrote the previous post in bed that morning). By the time I started cleaning the van it was probably 4pm. As I was making the bed, I opened all the doors to try and dry it out, including the back door which was right on the road. About 20 minutes into my cleaning, our neighbor man walks by with an axe in his right hand and wearing a large white fuzzy mask with hollowed out eyes. Like a deranged Jack-in-the-box character. And he stared me down the entire time he slowly walked past the open back door of the van as I am sitting on the bed, 5 feet from the road. He only looks forward once he passes the van. A minute later I hear loud banging coming from the next campsite, like he is chopping wood or something. Then silence.
At this point my mind started imagining that he would come out of the woods, axe over his head, mask on, and start attacking us with the axe. Patrick had been down by the front of the van with Bodhi and they slowly walk up to the van and Patrick says to calmly, "It's time to go."
So I start packing, slowly and calmly, as to not show that anything is wrong. Ten minutes later, the masked person with the axe walks past the van on the way back to his campground, with the mask in one hand, the axe in the other. This time, he doesn't even glance in my direction. After an hour, the van is completely packed up and we drive in silence, other than the sound of pouring rain, the 45 minutes into town where we pull into a rest stop and call a Motel 6 to make a reservation for the night. It is dark and rain is pounding down as we pick up my favorite local fast food and drive the 10 minutes to the motel.
We stayed a few nights at the motel before moving to a state park which we would usually avoid because they are crowded and expensive and crawling with park rangers (aka police). But I am just so scared to go back to camping, this felt like a necessary intermediate step. The image of the mask, the axe, the way he stared at me, are all burned in my brain. I panic anytime I see someone in an orange construction vest now. This definitely changes things for me. The way I pick campgrounds, the way I trust (or don't) my gut. Living full time in a campervan just doesn't feel as safe as it used to. Maybe it was just one bad experience or maybe I have been living a bubble of feeling safe and really should have been more careful all along. Either way, it was a fucking traumatic camping experience that I will unfortunately never be able to forget.