Most creepy campfire stories are about something out in the dark. Ours is about something that came right up to the fire ring while we slept and left a gift. Four gifts, actually. Then a fifth one, for somebody who wasn’t even there yet.
I work at a print shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In September of 2023, four of us from the shop took a long weekend at a walk-in campsite in the Chequamegon National Forest. Me, my coworker Tasha Brandt, her cousin Devin, and our press operator, a quiet guy named Lowell Pike who had been camping up there since he was a kid. My girlfriend Kat was supposed to drive up Saturday night after her shift.
The site was half a mile from a gravel lot, on a little rise above a lake. No other campers. Lowell said that was normal after Labor Day. The bugs were gone and the nights were cold enough for a real fire.
The first night we did what you do. Brats, too much beer, and then campfire spooky stories until the fire burned down to coals. Devin told one about a hook on a car door. Tasha told one she swore was from her grandpa. Around midnight we poured lake water on the coals, stirred them, poured again, and went to bed.
The First Stick
I got up first on Friday. Lowell’s rule was that whoever got up first made coffee, so I went to the fire ring with the percolator.
There was a stick leaning against the ring.
It was a roasting stick. Green wood, maybe four feet long, the bark peeled off in a neat spiral and the tip whittled into two clean prongs. Near the handle, somebody had carved two letters. TB.
Tasha Brandt.
I figured Lowell made it. He was the kind of guy who carves things. When he came out of his tent, I held it up and said, “Nice work.” He looked at it for a long time and said he didn’t make it. He said he never carves green birch because it splits.
Tasha laughed and said it was the nicest thing a man had done for her all year. Devin said a ranger probably came by. We kept it. We used it for hot dogs that night. That’s the part that bothers me now.
Creepy Campfire Stories Don’t Leave Shavings
Saturday morning there was a second stick. Same green birch, same spiral, same two prongs. The letters said DB. Devin.
This time I looked around the ring. There were wood shavings on the ground on the far side of the fire, in a little pile, like somebody had sat on the log there and worked for a while. The log was the one Lowell sat on every night. It was maybe six feet from Tasha’s tent.
Nobody heard anything. Four adults, and nobody heard a knife on wood six feet from a tent wall.
Devin made a joke about how we should leave out cookies. Tasha didn’t laugh this time. She asked Lowell if anybody lived out here, and Lowell said there used to be a guy. An old man who lived in a trailer off one of the fire roads. He used to sell carved walking sticks at a bait shop in town. Lowell said he must have died years ago, because the bait shop had been closed since Lowell was in high school.
I told myself that was the answer. Some local guy, some old habit. A little strange, but friendly. I mean, he was making us presents.
That afternoon Lowell and I hiked the shoreline to look for a trailer or a camp. We found a fire road with fresh tire ruts and a spot where somebody had cut three birch saplings low to the ground with a saw. The stumps were still wet. That was all.
Kat texted around six that she was leaving work and would be there by ten. I sent her a pin for the parking lot and told her to call when she got there so I could walk down with a light.
We made the fire big that night. Nobody wanted to tell stories. Devin tried one and gave up halfway. Around nine thirty, Lowell stood up to get more wood from the pile behind the tents, and he stopped.
The Fifth Stick
There were two sticks leaning against the woodpile. Fresh. The shavings under them were still pale.
One said LP. Lowell.
One said KM.
Kat’s last name is Mertens. Kat Mertens. She had never been to that campsite. She had never met Lowell or Devin. Nobody had said her last name out loud all weekend. I checked later. The only place her full name was written was on a sticky note in my car, with her phone number, from when we first started dating. My car was in the gravel lot, half a mile away. It was locked. It still is the only thing I can think of.
That’s when we smelled it. Cut birch, sharp and green, and under it, cigarette smoke. Close. Not drifting from somewhere. Close, like someone was standing right at the edge of the firelight, just past where we could see.
Lowell said, in a normal voice, “Evening.”
Nobody answered. A branch moved, out by the lake. Then nothing.
I called Kat. She was twenty minutes out. I told her not to come to the lot, to wait at the gas station in Clam Lake, and that we’d meet her. We left everything. Tents, cooler, the percolator. We took our phones and keys and walked out in a line with every flashlight we had, and none of us talked the whole way.
My car was fine. Locked. But the sticky note was gone from the cupholder.
What the Deputy Found
We came back the next morning with a deputy from the county. Our tents were still standing. Everything was where we left it.
Except the sticks. All five were gone, and so were the hot dog wrappers from Friday night, and the shavings were swept off the log. The deputy said probably kids from a cabin on the other side of the lake, messing with campers. He said it happens.
Then he walked over to the woodpile and found a sixth stick, lying flat on the ground behind it, half finished. The bark was only partly peeled. There were no letters on it yet. Just a little notch near the handle where somebody had started cutting.
He bagged it and said he’d ask around. Nobody ever called us back.
Lowell still camps up there. Not at that site. Tasha won’t go anywhere without cell service now. And Kat, who never even saw the place, has a strange habit I’ve never brought up. She won’t let me put her name on anything in the car. Not a receipt, not a parking pass. She tears them up first.
I’ve told this one a few times since, as one of those horror stories to tell your friends at a bonfire. People always ask the same thing. Who was the sixth stick for?
I don’t know. I think he didn’t know yet either.
Tell us your creepiest night by the fire
Have you ever found something by your campsite in the morning that wasn’t there when you went to sleep? Real creepy campfire stories like this one usually start with something small, so tell us yours in the comments. Scary camping nights make the best stories, as long as everyone gets home.
If you camp in the off season, read scary campfire stories about a stranger who took the empty chair at our friends’ fire, and trail cam horror story about what one hunter’s camera caught near his tent.
How scary was it?
More Scary Camping Stories
Something in the Trees Learned My Dad’s Knock
A Stranger Sat in Our Spare Chair and Told a Story About Us
My Trail Cam Caught a Man Wearing My Dad’s Jacket
Someone Marked My Trail With Orange Ribbons While I Walked It
An Empty Tent Moved Closer to My Ranger Cabin Every Night
A Tree Stand Moved Closer to Mine Every Weekend