ACA Home Forums What's the craziest thing to happen at your camp so far this summer?

Well, no whooping cough or anything that crazy...btu some stuff happened. WE have a "Family Games Night" on Tuesdays, where counselors end up yelling, screaming, cheering, you name it. Well, usually a few counselors will lose their voices the next day. So Wednesday a couple of counselors have sore throats, but we didn't think much of it, b/c people were just like, "I always lose my voice" and stuff like that. But then they didn't get better...so someone checked them out, found out they had bronchitis. Yuck. So, rumor is going around camp about it, although we tried to keep it quiet...and then a camper got sick...but that was it...and then after the campers left that week, we get a letter from campers saying that a lot of the girls had bronchitis! lol Crazy.

Haha and another, not my camp my friends...So they had a group of 12 year old girls at night in the cabin, and the boys cabin was next to it. There was a really bad storm so everyone was in the cabins. Then lightning struck a tree in front of the cabins, broke it in half, and lit it on fire! They decided it wasn't safe to take the kids out because they would have to walk right by the fire, so the kids just sat watching the fire out their windows lol.

CD7-

Hows your son? Hopefully better. I had a similar experience at the begining of second session. After I was on the mend from getting strep, I started feeling fine. One night I went to bed feeling great, woke up the next morning feeling great, joked around a bit with one of my campers then coughed. Well I couldnt breathe after i coughed. It was by far the scariest moment of my life. It was for my campers as well. One of them threw his head under his pillow and kept saying "please be a dream, please be a dream." Once I was able to get in some air I sent two campers to get the nurses. They came down along with the assisstant director. Once the got there I was breathing okay. I was sent to the hospital later that morning and the doctor said it wasn't whooping cough. Well here it is August 24 and I still have a cough. I'm going to my doctor on Thursday...wish me luck.

All this talk about whooping cough is interesting. We never got it in Ohio... but we do have a song. The campers love it. You all might know it, or a version of it.

Way down yonder, not far away
A Blue Jay died of a whooping cough
He whooped and he whooped and he whooped so hard
He blew his head and his tail right off

Kind of morbid, I know, but hey the campers love that song.

- Teenster

We had a camper from Japan, who had to go home unfortunately, who on all the paperwork said he was 14. Well, he was placed in the oldest boys cabin and when this kid gets off the van from the airport we were sort of stunned. Here's a 4 foot kid who in actuality is only 7. Anyway...

...we had a "kid screaming" every night for a week. At least that's what the counselors thought. One night we waited up outside the cabin until the screaming had been timed to start. (When counselors don't talk to each other and to the other cabins then things that are easily explained take forever.) Well all the sudden it started, and it sounded like a woman screaming. That's when I figured it out... it was just a Barred Owl. We followed the "screaming" and it kept moving further into the woods. Thus we realized no screaming kids and no ghosts. It finally changed to its regular who cooks for you call.

My son's doing great!! Thanks for asking!! Good luck with the doctor. The killer cough, whooping cough, or whatever it is hangs around for a LONG time!!!

Well this wasnt really a bad crazy thing, but more of a funny/crazy thing...one nite during my CIT session my friend and i had to watch two of the cabins because the counselors had to go to a big devotion and so we had this bucket candle that belonged to one of the counselors and we lit it for light and i got bored and being the pyro that i am i started burning things in it, and it starts to sizzle for some reason and i look in and theres cleansing napkins in it and then i put paper and ice cream in it....so we've got this big fire goin and another one of my friends comes up and puts a lot of bug spray on it and then it starts burning the outside of the bucket, so we start to panic and my friend grabs her soda and puts it in the fire thinking it would go out...it makes this little explosion and the wax is poppin out at this point,smoke goin everywhere! and after she did that, all the trainees that were watchin cabins came over to the table we were sittin at and were like WHAT HAPPENEd and were still freakin out cos its big now, so they put dirt in it and it finally goes out, then the counselors come back and we're like "did you see your candle we messed it up" and then we thought she'd be mad and shes like "LIGHT IT UP AGAIN LETS PUT SOME MORE STUFF IN!" it was the funniest thing so we light it up and put all sorts of crap in it, and then shes like "i declare this the cabin 6 pyro bucket" it was one of the best nites!! haha :p

My unit was famous for illness.
1st week- I get bitten by a HUGE ant on my neck and 24 hours later I am in the hospital w/ an allergic reaction! scary!
2nd and various other random weeks-co-counsellor ends up in the emergency room for heart problems and a horrific infection in her leg from a tiny cut acquired during a long creek stomp.
We had an earthquake (the camp is in Illinois).
We also had the record # of pukers for the summer most of which I played a large role in cleaning up, usually in the wee hours of the morning.
We also got lost in the woods for 2 and 1/2 hours on an overnight camping trip with 28 10year olds.
I have never ever had such a crazy summer in my life. And these are only the things I feel comfortable sharing in public view.
P.S. We also had a drinking incident during time there were no campers on camp. Seven people were let go, including myself. which is really shocking, because it is so out of characteristic for me. There I confessed!

this was a summer of craziness, but there are two things that stand out most in my mind

1-I dont know if yall heard about a big wildfire in the mountains above Palm Springs, but there was one and my camp is in those mountains. the fire kept getting closer and closer to camp, and on the last full day of the first session, we had to evacuate camp. that was absolute craziness...but we made it into something fun and kept the girls quite calm. The fire didnt come anywhere near camp (but it is our policy to evacuate if it is within 6-10 miles), and it rained the day after we evacuated.

2-there is a campground about a mile from our camp that was closed this summer due to logging (of the bark beetle infested trees), but when the fire happened, the forest service opened it up for a group of some kind of victims of something, because their other campground was closer to the fire and was closed. ANYWAYS, they would run out in front of our cars (we have to pass through dark canyon to enter/exit our camp) and yell at us to slow down, from 1-3 in the morning, they would howl like coyotes and do all of these weird cult-like chants which we could hear up at our camp, they had HUGE slabs of beef hanging from the trees, and the kicker was that one day, they went to the stream that flows through the campground (which people are not allowed within 10 feet of due to an endagered frog that lives in it) and they were doing some sort of baptizing. they were at the campground for 9 days and it was one of the most bizarre things ive seen in a while

I agree with Wally. The worst thing that probably happened at our camp consisted of the inebriation at camp. And us having the cops called on us at a local hotel.

And when one counselor fell asleep when she was supposed to teach tennis and the kids ran all over the place.

And when one counselor got hurt and was put on a narcotic pain killer. Later that week his pills and another counselor's narcotic pain killers ended up disappearing from the infirmary area.

Or the tragic death of a girl on a rapids trip. We're very thankful she wasn't a camper but our prayers are still with her family and everyone who had to be involved in that horrific event.

Plus what I assume to be the usual instances of sex all over camp. Arts and crafts...tee pee in the woods...bathroom at the dining hall....staff lounge....climbing wall...

Yeah, I'll see your vagueness one and raise you with hypothetics.

Some people, that I know really well, that were outside for some reason during the whole "police raid" at the motel ended up hiding behind bushes and cars for an hour while the police patrolled up and down the pathways of the motel looking for people that may have bolted. Then as soon as the coast was clear, like nine people popped up out of nowhere and were crammed into this person that I know really well's car and sped out of there at ninety miles a hour. That was nuts.
That last day was nuts too. I guess pretty much every cabin group had a meeting place really early in the morning. At least most of them were cool by breakfast (by my count, eighty percent or so were cool anyways).
As for all the hooking up all over the place, well, I wouldnt know anything about that.....the deck behind the dance studio, tennis courts, basketball courts, teepees, arts and crafts, soccer field, bathrooms, etc., nope no knowledge whatsoever.

We had quite a few weird things.
First- We had an e.coli virus scare. The water was tested positive in one of our 4 wells on camp and only the staff were told. We didn't tell the campers, but we had to drink bottled water for over a week in the dining hall. Some of the sinks were okay, but the well that was effected happened to give water to the dining hall, infirmary (where I lived in a back bedroom), showerhouse, and staffhouse. As a result, we couldn't even shower or use any of the water in that area until they bleached the whole system. Then we could shower but we came out smelling of bleach. We couldn't trust anything and all the staff were paranoid. It turned out the test had a faulty result though.

Also- there was one particular cabin that every session (with different kids) they always saw a ghost- a lady in white- asking to come into their cabin on a rainy night. It was kind of weird because different kids and counselors lived there every session so there's no good explanation.