This month’s Blogging for Books challenge is to write a ghost story or about a time you were really scared. This story from long ago is a bit of both.

When I was in Girl Guides (Canadian equivalent to Girl Scouts), we used to go camping every year. Camping was a joke really, because I was used to tents, the great outdoors, a long walk to a bathroom, and all that sort of thing from camping with my father. Camping with the guides meant sleeping in a large cabin with a kitchen and electricity and washrooms and all that. You know – not exactly roughing it.

There were actually several cabins in the area. They were all relatively similar, except for one. It was called Sleepy Hollow (how fitting) and it was rumored to be haunted.

We never really believed it. But at the same time, we did. Deep down we did because we were young and we believed anything. We used to hike past it and we would all whisper to each other “stories” we had heard – all about the crazy woman who had killed a bunch of campers, then herself. Supposedly it was her ghost that lurked inside Sleepy Hollow.

Sleepy Hollow was a brown and white striped cabin, large, and run-down, compared to all the other well-kept cabins. I still don’t really know why no one ever took care of it. Maybe the adults believed it too. The windows were grimy and inside, everything was covered in dust. Those of us who were really brave (or who just didn’t want to be called “chicken”) would sneak up to the window to peek inside.

One girl even climbed halfway up the rotting staircase before being called back down by the leaders.

One evening, just a little before sunset, a small group of us set out on a hike to work towards one of our merit badges. We wound up standing in front of Sleepy Hollow, debating whether we really believed or whether it was all nonsense.

As the sun dipped low behind the clouds, and a bit of fog drifted down near the lake in back, we tiptoed closer and rubbed at the dirty windows. We pressed our clean noses to the filthy glass, our breath steaming up to block our view. We told stories once again, each trying to “up” the other as it got darker. My heart had risen into my skull, judging by the sounds of its beating so close in my eardrums.

Just as it was getting to a point where it was hard to see inside due to the lack of light, one girl (I believe her name was Tracy) let out a scream. All of us jumped. We crowded closer as she whispered, “Something moved inside!”

We squinted. We tried desperately to see. Another girl started pleading to go back to our own camp before it got too dark to get back. We began to brush it off as Tracy’s imagination and agreed to return.

“Oh my God!” I said suddenly.

Everyone’s attention snapped back to the large room inside. “Something IS moving!” someone else said.

And something was. Something way in the back of the empty, rotting, so-called haunted cabin was moving slowly. And it looked like maybe, just maybe it was moving this way.

Have you ever heard seven girls between the ages of 12 and 15 scream at once? It’s beyond horror movie material. We nearly trampled each other as we shrieked and shoved and turned to run from the house. We hit the path and none of us looked back.

None except me. I ran, but before I reached the turn for our cabin, I turned to look over my shoulder. If it had been a movie, or a Stephen King novel I would have seen a ghostly woman wave her arms at us from the front door. In a movie, I definitely would have tripped over tree roots or a rock or my own feet as I turned and seen a beast lunging towards me. But this isn’t fiction. This is reality.

What I saw when I turned was just an old, neglected run-down house. I saw a cabin that hadn’t been used in so long it was collecting horror stories as quickly as it was collecting cobwebs.

I also saw a tree across the path from the cabin. The wind that had brought the fog in to settle over the water had started to pick up a bit and the tree was swaying ever so slightly. Slowing down, just a little, I noticed that the lower branches were being picked up by the hazy reflection in the window – the same window we had just been peering into.

It suddenly dawned on me… That wasn’t a witch or a goblin or a ghostly figure we had seen in the house. It was just the badly reflected image of the tree blowing in the breeze. There was no haunting going on in there. It was just nature helping out a collective of hyperactive imaginations in some silly, hyperventilating adolescent girls.

No ghost. Phew.

But my heart raced anyway and blood rushed in my ears.

No ghost.

But I ran anyway.

You know… just in case.