Your dim lantern casts a thousand shadows down here in the low, soggy hold of the sail-training ship Amphion. But there is only one moving shadow that interests you. You're convinced it's a stowaway because, what else could it be?
Your dim lantern casts a thousand shadows down here in the low, soggy hold of the sail-training ship Amphion. But there is only one moving shadow that interests you. As you approach it, you begin to wonder who or what you have cornered, because it's not what you thought it was.
Welcome to Camp Monsters Summer Camp. Over the past few seasons of the show, we’ve gotten tons of suggestions on the monsters we should cover. We noticed that a lot of these take place at a summer camp. So we’ve collected the best of the stories you’ve sent — and researched a few of our own — to create our first series of legendary summer camp creatures. Hopefully you can take these episodes with you to summer camp or they’ll bring you back to when you were a camper, scared of what might be lurking outside of your cabin.
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This ship is hauling a cargo of shadows. At least, that how it looks in the dim light of your lantern. Down here in the hold, a thousand shadows shift with every heave of the sea, sliding across the straining towers of rope-lashed cargo that crowds all around. The storm outside roars, and the hull groans and screams under the strain until… until you aren’t sure all those sounds are coming from the hull. But you have to keep going. Because you know you have it cornered.
Down there… down as far as you can go. Down there past the furthest edge of your light. Hiding. Tucked into a damp corner where the filthy bilgewater swirls around its feet… you’ve finally caught up to The Stowaway. But as your footsteps… echo… one after the other on the grating beneath you… and the sound of the storm roars outside… and the shadows shift… you begin to wonder who-- or what-- you have cornered down here. And if the only way out is through you… then… what if that’s the way it decides to go?
In the dimness up ahead, you see it. A shadow that moves against the sea… a sound the ship doesn’t make. It’s The Stowaway. But it’s not what you thought it was…
This is the Camp Monsters Podcast.
In the old days, sea captains used to trail bottles of their favorite beverages on a rope behind their ship to try to keep them cool. I guess you could still do that… but it wouldn’t keep your cans as cold as a YETI Colster Can Insulator. Don’t believe me? Well, next time you’re the captain of a old-timey sailing ship, try both methods and find out. In the meantime, just know that the YETI Colster’s double-walled vacuum insulation keeps your cans as cool as can-cooler science can– and prevents condensation, so your drink stays cold and your hands stay dry. The YETI Colster Can Cooler is dishwasher safe, and comes in a whole bunch of colors that are fun to say and kind of on-theme for this episode: Offshore Blue… Seafoam… Bimini Pink… Navy… Check them out at REI.com, or in person at your local REI. Thanks, YETI!
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Well, it may not be a campfire in the woods, but it’s still cozy here on the mess deck of this old sailing barque. Especially with the weather turning rough outside-- it’s warm and snug in here. A little dated, sure… I don’t think a modern interior designer would know what to do with all this brown formica and flourescent lighting. Looks like the last overhaul in here was back in the 1970s, fifty years after this ship was launched. But function tops form on a good old sail-training tall-ship. We’re lucky to have her-- they don’t make tall-masted ships like this anymore. She was launched back in the 1920s, at the very tail-end of the Age of Sail. Thousands of years of sailing-knowledge and technology were cast into her steel hull… and her steel deck, and three towering masts supported by cables, all made of steel, and strong enough to spread more sail than the old timber-masted tall-ships could ever dream of. They called ships like this “windjammers,” because all a captain had to do was jam them into the strongest winds he could find, and off they’d go.
It’s a testament to their strength that, a hundred years later, this boat is still working-- still building teamwork and camaraderie among the young crews who are lucky enough to get a berth at a sail-training summer camp like this one. Yes, we’re lucky to be aboard her-- and lucky that our watch just ended, by the sound of the storm building out there. Grab that coffee mug! When the weather gets thick and the ship is leaning and leaping over the swells, everything that isn’t lashed down starts to slide around.
Oh, but don’t worry-- this isn’t even really weather to a windjammer like this. No, they were built for this and much worse. It takes something really exceptional-- really unlucky-- to put these ships in danger. And this is a lucky barque-- she’s been lucky her whole hundred years of existence. In fact, they say that when she and her sister ship were launched, this boat got all the luck…
Have you heard that story? It starts back in 1928, on a night much fouler than this one, way down in the hold of the Bremerhaven-- that was the name of our unlucky sister-ship.
The Bremerhaven was a training ship, just like ours. Nowadays a sailing camp might last for a week or two, maybe a month if you’re lucky. But back in 1928 these boats weren’t carrying campers for a once-in-a-lifetime experience… they were preparing young sailor cadets for a lifetime at sea. So circumnavigations-- that is, trips around the world-- lasting half a year or more were the rule. How long those trips took depended on how fast the winds would blow.
That night… that night they were blowing plenty fast. On deck it was a gale, heeling the ship over to one side at a steep angle as it slammed through the waves, with cadets and crew in their slickers and foul-weather gear clinging to lifelines and rigging as they struggled about their duties.
Tristan had just come off watch– just walked out of the storm and into the forward passage… when he saw the little access hatch to the hold snap shut. He saw it distinctly, in the light of the electric storm-lantern he carried-- he watched the hatch snap shut, and the latch turn. And Tristan positively smiled. Because he thought he was about to solve a great mystery. The mystery of what was going on aboard the sailing barque Bremerhaven.
It was a stowaway. When he saw the hold hatch close, he became convinced of it. The ship had a stowaway aboard. The pieces began to fit themselves together in Tristan’s mind, all the little things that he’d begun to notice going wrong: the gear that seemed to move itself from one place to another in the lockers and closed spaces of the ship– the stowaway must be moving them while hiding there. The extra plate of food Tristan sometimes noticed on the table at meals, that no one would ever fess up to plating-- no doubt whenever he didn’t notice it, it went to feed the stowaway.
And the anxious demeanor of the cadets that Tristan– as a Senior Sailing Instructor– was supposed to be teaching. Tristan had chalked their nerves up to the fact they had just sailed down below forty degrees south latitude, into the “roaring forties” as that region is called, where the wind whips constant crashing gales past the furthest southern tips of Africa and South America. But now he realized that, in addition, every cadet on board must be in on this secret attempt to hide the stowaway. Striving to keep it from the ship’s officers and other instructors like him would explain why the cadets were so jumpy.
Tristan felt a moment of regret that his cadets hadn’t trusted him with their secret. He’d thought they viewed him differently than the officers and the other instructors, who could be hard to the point of viciousness. Tristan treated the cadets with respect, even when correcting them. He inquired about them when they got hurt aboard, and grieved with the rest when one was killed in an accident or lost from the rigging in a storm-- not a common occurrence, but one that Tristan had lived through on each of the last two cruises, unfortunately. Already the Bremerhaven was beginning to earn a sour reputation as an unlucky boat…
But Tristan brushed those feelings away. It didn’t matter– regardless of what the cadets thought of him, he was about to uncover their little secret. So, still in his dripping slicker and foul-weather gear, Tristan stepped briskly to the hold hatchway and threw it open, bursting into the dark hold and shining the dim light of his electric torch around.
Bulky heaps of cargo loomed up on either side of the dim aisle. Cargo straps and rope-ends swung to and fro as the leaping of the ship moved them. The violence of the storm outside echoed as a distant roar, the hull-plates moaning under strain. Shadows leapt around, and the darkness was complete wherever Tristan’s light wasn’t shining. But there was no one there. And Tristan was puzzled. There must be someone here. They must be hiding. Whoever this stowaway was, they were quick.
Tristan closed the hatch behind him, and re-latched it so he’d hear if the stowaway managed to double back and let themselves out into the passage. Then he started walking slowly down the length of the hold, steadying himself against the motions of the ship, stopping constantly to search the dark, awkward gaps between the tall, lashed-down stacks of crates and burlap sacks and rough lumber that made up the cargo.
The further he went, though, the more nervous Tristan became that he’d missed something. He kept shining his light back down the aisle behind him, always expecting to catch sight of some figure, either making quickly for the hatch they’d come in by, or… or sneaking up on him. But there was never anything there. He felt eyes on him, but he couldn’t tell where the gaze came from. And there were sounds, too– sounds he tried to tell himself were made by cargo shifting, but…
Finally he reached the point where the main hold ended, and the ceiling got abruptly lower as the bulkheads for the aft compartments jutted in overhead. There was nothing back in this last little nook except for old gear-- sails, ropes, coils of rusted cable and chains. The air down here took on a tinge of that dank, fetid smell that Tristan had known so well belowdecks of the water-logged old wooden ships he’d grown up sailing in. He could hear the bilgewater trickling along beneath the gratings as the ship worked through the heavy weather.
Tristan heard a rustle, the sound of something moving quickly in the piled gear just beside his head. He swung his electric light over that way… just in time to see the rear end of a large rat scrambling away from him through the braids of a frayed old rope. Tristan grimaced and shook his head, then pointed his beam back along the aisle, searching for the final aft bulkhead that he knew couldn’t be far off now.
And then he caught a glimpse… just the flash of movement down at the very end of the hold– of something darting swiftly behind the end of a jutting steel gear rack. Probably making for the aft hatch, but Tristan knew that was kept secured from the outside-- so there was no way out. No… no, Tristan had it cornered, now. He was about to solve the mystery.
But suddenly, Tristan wasn’t sure he wanted to. Something… crawled up from his belly and clutched at his heart– and it took him a moment to recognize that it was fear– fear mounting its way to panic. Where it came from-- what had sparked it– he didn’t know… but he felt the overwhelming urge to turn around, to go back the way he came, to run as fast as he could down the narrow aisle knowing… knowing that something dark and horrible was right at his heels, too close for him to risk turning to look at. He wanted out of this hold. Worse than that… he wanted off of this ship. From some deep, unexplored corner of his soul he felt that. He wanted off of the Bremerhaven. And he never wanted to see it again.
The feeling was so strong, and so foreign to anything Tristan had ever felt before that it took him a moment to shake it off. But shake it off he did, throwing these unfamiliar desires back into the hold of his subconscious and slamming a strong hatch over them. This was his ship, he was Instructor on it, he had a duty to it and to his fellow crew. So before he had time for another thought, Tristan raced to the end of the rack, shone his light around it, saw a dark figure huddled there and dove at it. He tried to wrap his arms around it, to tackle it, but… the next thing Tristan knew he was lying on his back on the floor, shaking his head and trying to clear the bright spots that had exploded behind his eyes when he’d slammed his skull into the steel bulkhead.
Had he dove and… missed? Had the stowaway dodged him? He’d felt the clammy wetness of a sea-drenched slicker pass through his arms, but… where was the stowaway?
The flashlight was still in his hand, he realized, and as he moved it slowly around he… he saw the dark figure, hovering in the air above his head. Floating… What?... No… he pulled himself painfully up onto his knees, and raised a hand to touch… to touch the empty set of foul weather gear that was hung neatly on a hanger from the end of the steel rack… swaying with the motion of the ship… that… must have been what he’d seen… what he’d mistaken for the stowaway.
Tristan… Tristan would have laughed, if… if he could have shaken the overwhelming feeling of fear… of being in the presence of something unnatural. But it was… just an empty slicker. Just… what was it doing down here? How could it possibly have…? Tristan ran his hands up and down the heavy waterproof canvas. Then he touched the rack, and the bulkhead that had nearly brained him, and the floor all around. And it was funny… no, it was… it was frightening. Everything around him was dry except… except the slicker. The slicker was soaking wet, like it had just been taken off by someone who had been out in the weather. Or…
Tristan flipped back the folds of the jacket and thrust his hands inside. The lining of it was soaked and slimy, and a strong smell like green water and rotting seaweed hit his nose. It felt and smelled like the slicker of someone who had been floating in a stagnant sea for… for a very long time.
Then Tristan ran. He back through the hold, as fast as he could, with that feeling all the way that there was something else racing up behind him. He made it to the hatch, and through. He slammed it shut, but as he twisted the latch he felt… something in there… something gripping the inside handle and straining against him… something… something too strong for him.
He battled as long as he could, but… but he was losing. And when his strength finally gave out, and the handle was wrenched from his hands he fell back– fell away from the hatch as it was flung open… flung open to reveal… empty darkness.
He spent long, long moments on the floor, staring into that darkness, before he realized that… nothing had emerged, that… nothing was there… and that his heart was still beating. He rose and he closed the hatch again– softly, quietly… almost tenderly, this time. Then he stepped back and stood there, staring at the hatch for some time. And when he crept off down the passage to his cabin he walked backward, never letting that door out of his sight.
He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep that night, but in fact he passed out almost instantly. And he dreamt of the sea. Of water, cold water-- waves lifting him up and dropping him down. He dreamt of a sea so vast that he didn’t see the point of moving against it, swimming through it… so he just floated, face-down, not even breathing, for days… for weeks…
When the whistles and cries of “all hands on deck” woke him, Tristan was grateful, in spite of the fatigue he felt. He was even more thankful when he tumbled up to the deck-- still tugging on his gear-- and found that the world was now bathed in daylight-- dim, grey, freezing-rain-swept daylight… but welcome nonetheless.
On this freezing morning Tristan and his cadets were set to reefing the mizzen upper tops’l-- which meant climbing the frozen rope-ladder “ratlinns” high up the mast, and then sliding– with only a footrope to support them– out onto the yards: the long steel poles that jutted sideways from the masts and supported the sails. All this with the rain coming down in sheets and the wind blowing a gale; with the ship heeling far over and their hands wet and numb, trying to haul up sails stiff with a coat of ice…
Heeled shoes on the footrope and a healthy lean over the yard were the only thing keeping any of them aboard. The wind made a ghostly howl in the steel rigging all around them, and the ship bucked and swooped as it dove through the waves. Tristan stationed himself halfway out on the yard, with three cadets further out and four closer to the mast. He bellowed orders and encouragement as loud as he could in both directions-- sounds that the cadets heard as tiny squeaks through the wind, if they heard them at all. But– armful by freezing, frozen armful– the sail was hauled in and the reef-knots tied by eight sets of numb hands. When he was finally satisfied with their work, Tristan yelled and motioned them all back to the deck.
One, two, three, four cadets preceded him down the ratlinns. He counted them as they descended, just to be sure. The others were coming in from further out on the yard, and Tristan climbed a few steps up the mast to let them descend before him. One, two, three more. That made seven, his whole complement. Tristan was about to follow them, when…
He glanced down the long steel yard, apprehensive that one of his cadets had botched a hitch and they’d all be roused out again later to fix a dangerously flapping sail. And out on the very furthest end he saw a figure, crouched low, clinging to the yard for dear life.
The deck far below was rolling wildly as the ship plunged through the mountainous green waves. This high up the mast, that motion was amplified a hundred-fold, so that at any given moment you were hurtling with frightening speed in one direction, then another, never able to predict which way you’d be rocketing next. On a day like this even Tristan got a little giddy up there, though he’d never admit it. The wild ride could freeze a young cadet wherever they clung-- and it looked like that’s what had happened here. Except…
Except Tristan was sure that his whole team had come in. He’d counted them. He looked down now to re-count… but other groups were swarming in off of other yards, and the ratlinns were covered in dark, wet forms descending. Hadn’t they all come in? Hadn’t he seen their faces, watched them all go past, back down toward the deck... Hadn’t he? Hadn’t he? Tristan looked back out at the figure on the end of the yard, shouted encouragement… and when that didn’t work he swung his legs down onto the footrope once more, and began to inch his way out.
This was heavy weather. Even an old hand like Tristan had to admit that. Midway out onto the yard he called again, cast his voice against the wind, trying to unfreeze the cadet or at least get him to look in his direction so that Tristan could find out who he was. Because the closer he got to the clinging form, the slower Tristan approached… and the more he began to feel… huh… it was crazy to think… up here in the daylight… but he began to feel that same dread of the impossible that he’d felt deep down in the hold the night before… that same terrifying sense that he was in the presence of something… unnatural… uncanny…
The whole world howled through the rigging where Tristan crouched, swinging on the icy footrope high above the racing, churning waves that rose like the backs of enormous living beasts, stretching slowly up beside the ship before sliding back down again. Tristan was close enough now to the huddled form of the cadet that he could reach out and touch him… but he didn’t want to. He told himself it was because the wild gyrations of the mast made loosing his grip on the yard so dangerous, even for an instant… and that was true, but it wasn’t what made him pause. It was… that feeling. That fear. That unaccountable instinct that something had gone horribly wrong.
Tristan mastered himself, and in a pause at the top of one of the mast’s wild swings he unhooked his arm from the yard for a moment, and tapped the cadet on the shoulder. No response. Tristan clung back on with both arms until the bottom of the next arc of the mast, then loosed his grip long enough to give the cadet’s shoulder a shake and a slap. Still nothing. Except…
A small movement caught Tristan’s eye, and he tried to place it. The form stayed hunched over, clinging to the yard, moving only with it… but something… Tristan looked the figure over from top to bottom, and he saw what it was. Between the bottom of the cadet’s dark slicker and the top of his black, wet shoe, there was a little sliver of… skin? Of something pale, but… that… moved… all in an instant Tristan tried to determine what he was seeing. And then it moved again, and Tristan watched as a small, pale crab slowly clawed its way down the cadet’s shoe. And Tristan felt his own body slacken with horror as he remembered the only other time he’d seen a crab like that… crawling from the clothing of a poor shipwreck victim that he’d had to help fish out… after a week or more in the sea.
Sound fled from Tristan’s world, and time distorted so that he couldn’t tell whether things were happening very quickly or very slowly. The yard that Tristan was trying to cling to hurtled toward the face of a rising wave with more force and speed than he’d yet felt, and at the same time the figure on the end of the yard began to unfurl itself. The brim of the wide, wet sou’wester hat tilted back, degree by degree, and Tristan’s terrified vision narrowed until all he could see was more and more of that face being revealed: a bloated, mottled, pale-blue-and-green face, with the deadly-dark stone-like sea racing behind it. When the brim of the hat tilted back to the eyes of the figure-- to where the eyes should be-- Tristan saw nothing but gaping darkness… and at that instant there was a gasp on deck, as the cadets saw Tristan falter, and fail, and watched his grip on the yard fade until he tumbled backward off of the footrope and into the racing green face of a wave.
At least, I assume that there was a gasp on deck, and that the cadets felt bad that an instructor that they liked had tumbled overboard in seas that ruled out any attempt at rescue. I know they threw some life rings into the water after him, because when Tristan was miraculously found by a freighter several hours later he was clinging to one.
But if any other actions were taken on board the Bremerhaven to try to save her man overboard, no one will ever know. Because the ship didn’t arrive at its next port of call, and the only times it has ever been seen again are fleeting glimpses through the squalling rain of heavy storms in the lower latitudes… even to this day. Old sailors will tell you that some unlucky ships are doomed to sail through eternal storms, without ever the joy of landfall or the final sorrow of destruction to put an end to their desperate labors. Well, you can believe it or not… but for the rest of his life, Tristan did. And he was convinced that, though he couldn’t recognize the face of the figure at the end of that yard, in the condition that it was in-- Tristan was convinced that one of the cadets that had been lost on the previous cruises had come back to save him… to save him by scaring him overboard.
It was a miracle that the freighter that found Tristan was passing that far south at that time of year. It was a miracle that they spotted him, and even more incredible that they were able to throw a line and haul him aboard, considering that it was far too rough to launch a boat to save him. How he survived as long as he did in those frigid waters was enough to make the doctors shake their heads-- but such things do happen, like with the cook Charles JAHK-in who survived the Titanic. Tristan lived to a ripe old age, and didn’t ship aboard that great black trawler Death until it came for him in his sleep at home in San Francisco, in 1974.
Oop… hold on. There go the lights-- the generator must have fritzed out again. The engine room crew will get it back online in a few minutes… hopefully. Here’s a flashlight. Now that we’ve had a warm drink and told our little tale, we’d better hit the bunks-- in less than four hours we’ll have to be back out there in that howling mess, back up the ratlinns and onto the yards, hauling rough canvas with hands that… I don’t know about yours, but mine have seen softer days.
But on your way down to your cabin… down those dark passageways below decks… if you see anything unusual… it may be best to ignore it. You’re tired-- we’re all tired-- and the eyes play funny tricks when they’re fatigued. That’s what you can tell yourself as you lock the bulkhead door behind you, and never know for sure what it was you thought you saw down the end of that passage…
But I know what I saw. I swear it was a YETI Tundra 45 Hard Cooler. You know what they say about the open ocean: water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. But with a YETI Tundra 45 on board, you’ll have plenty to drink AND it’ll be kept ice cold for days at a time, no matter how hot the weather outside… and what could have been a parched day adrift turns into a sun-drenched party. Check it out at REI dot com, or in-store at your local REI. Thanks, YETI!
Camp Monsters is part of the REI podcast network. Sharing our breeze and bringing us luck is our new Associate Producer Jenny “The Albatross” Barber. She earned that nickname because she can do everything on the fly. The steady wind in our sails is Senior Producer Chelsea Davis… though she can become a gale, screaming through the rigging if we miss a deadline. We’ll need a few more seasons before I can make the “Roaring Forties” joke. Those unnatural mutterings you heard deep in the belly of the ship were made by our Engineer, Nick Patri, who is still looking for the engine room. It’s a sailing ship, Nick. And you’re a sound engineer. Toasting each others’ success with dainty glasses of port in the warmth of the luxurious captain’s cabin are our executive producers, Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. And out there on the end of the plunging yardarm, trying to reef sail with numb hands in the freezing rain is yours truly, the writer and host of the Camp Monsters podcast. Call me Ishmael. Or-- Weston Davis. Thanks for listening.
Next week a simple evening walk through the woods becomes complicated when the rain and night close in. There’s a light up ahead… a little building, promising shelter from the sudden storm. It’s warm and dry inside, but… we aren’t the only ones there. And as it turns out… we would have been much better off in the rain… See you next week.
As always, the stories we tell here on Camp Monsters are just that: stories. Some of them are based on things that people claim to have seen and experienced, but it’s up to you to decide what you believe… and how to explain away what you don’t. Please like, share, rate, and review this podcast, and spread the word any way you can. We sure appreciate it. Thank you.