I once had the opportunity to be a youth camp counselor over a two-week period in the summer. This camp took place on the grounds of Gettysburg College. The last two days we spent on campus turned out to be extremely paranormally eventful.

A group of the young people I was counseling had heard the story of the Night of a Thousand Hells (see the story elsewhere on this site) from two other counselors who happened to be present that night. They wanted to do a paranormal investigation, but I told them that there was nothing on campus to investigate. Little did I know that these kids were more resourceful than I gave them credit for, and had already gone to the campus library and obtained several pamphlets explaining just how very wrong I was. I continued to try to get out of it, saying we didn’t have and couldn’t get permission. They went and got it. I couldn’t back down from that kind of devotion.

We went first to the theater. There was a girl working there late and she told us that as soon as she left that we could go ahead and get started. She explained to us about the spirit that liked to watch the performances from up in the balcony and then bailed. We were left alone to investigate.

As we looked around the main room first, it became very clear to us that there was something or someone up in that balcony almost immediately. A black shadow kept moving around up in the box, and the strange cherubic figures lining the walls kept seeming to move and stare us down. We continued through the building, winding up in the wardrobe room. In this room, there was a hatch that led down into darkness, presumably under the stage. We kept feeling something strange coming from it, and the younger guys in the group wanted to go over to it and check it out. I suggested they did not, but one of them insisted. As soon as he got closer, he screamed in pain, and the next thing I knew, there was blood all over him. I grabbed him and took him to a nearby sink where we washed him up and saw that the letter J was cut into his arm. His name was Jason, and so he thought something was trying to communicate with him. The plaque near the door dedicated the theater to someone… I forget the name now, but it also started with a J, so none of us were too sure. Another of the guys started feeling really cold, and as he was showing me the goosebumps he had, I noticed he also had a J in his arm in the form of pinpricks which started bleeding shortly after I noticed them.

There was a loud banging from the direction of the trapdoor, and then there were footsteps that started coming closer and closer. One of the guys drew a knife, but it soon became clear that it would do no good and he started to run. As he was the most popular of the teenagers that were with me, everyone else followed suit. I, being left alone, followed.

We ran back to the dormitories where we were staying. In front, five of my friends who were also acting as camp counselors (all of whom had been present at the night of a thousand hells) saw us running out of the theater and joined up with us. With a group of us, half of which were experienced with the supernatural, we decided to go back. We broke up into two groups. I took three of the teens, and two of my friends, and my friend Darren took the other four teens and two of my other friends. One of my friends waited outside to watch and make sure no one else was just messing around with us (even though we firmly asserted that there was no way anyone could have “messed with us” the way we had been messed with). One team took the upstairs, and my team went down.

We started making our way over. Steve pulled out his video camera which he had brought along just in case such an opportunity arose. As we neared the entryway to the theater, Steve cursed out loud and said the fully charged battery was dead. He pulled out another, but after only a minute or so of shooting, it also died on him. The last few minutes of his recording was nothing but interference.

We got inside at 9pm, roughly. Almost immediately, we started feeling like something was chasing us, and my friends and I had to follow the teens, who ran into the office section of the building. We were getting ready to call it a night for there sake, but things were just getting too interesting. We started hearing footsteps and even some strange chuckling/hissing sounds everywhere we went, almost constantly. They were so clear we could follow them, and we did so to an L-shaped intersection near a large hallway. There were two doors (that I remember) there, one into an office and one into a supply closet. Jason reached out and began to open the supply closet, but something grabbed it from him and pulled it tightly shut, making a loud screeching noise at the same time. It wasn’t locked, but none of us could force it open again, and none of us really wanted to with that hellish noise coming out of it.

We decided to abandon this area, but as we were on the way up the stairs the door to the office burst open loudly. Everyone looked back, including me. I was closest, having been standing directly in front of the door and looking into it when it opened. I saw a strange black figure standing on the other side of the room. Later, when we compared stories, some people saw nothing, some saw the same figure, and some saw the same figure only coming through the door.

I’m sorry to admit it, but when everyone else ran, so did I.

When we got to the top of the stairs, one of the teenagers had a cross-shaped cut bleeding profusely on his leg, and Jason had another injury on his other arm, also in a cross shape.

We met up with the other team while trying to nurse our wounds. Only my college friends remained, and they told me that the teens had run away and completely abandoned them. Bill, the dorm supervisor you may remember from the story of the night of a thousand hells, asked me where we had been five minutes ago when they were downstairs calling for us. We described the exact location, and it turns out they were also there at the same time as us, calling our names at the top of their lungs repeatedly. I asked them if they had been in the office or the supply closet.

“No,” Bill said, “but something in the supply closet screamed at us, and the office door slammed open.”

Then Darren piped up. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Ten, about?” I asked. It shouldn’t have even been that, as we’d only been in there a half hour to forty five minutes.

“Guess again,” he said. “Look out the window.”

I did. It was daylight. It absolutely should not have been, and I can back that up because one of the kids had a watch on. It said the time was 10:05.

BONUS: The next day, two girls came up to me completely at random. I had no idea who they were, but they somehow knew all about me and told me they had been in the art room and saw a little boy dressed all in blue. They followed him to a room where he seemed to disappear. They found a portrait of that very boy hanging on the wall there. The girls weren’t kidding… they were almost in hysterics when they told me this story.