Children’s Folklore Recent Titles in Greenwood Folklore Handbooks Myth: a handbook

Th
e Counselor’s Death
There was once a jail about a hundred miles from Surprise Lake Camp. One summer 
night when camp was in session there was a prison break, and one of the prisoners got 
away. He was notorious for axing women to death, raping and axing them to death. The 
night that this guy broke out of jail it was raining, it was cold, damp and rainy, one of 
those real dark, gloomy nights. They put out an all points bulletin and everyone was 
searching the area for this guy. Especially all the girls had to beware, because they knew he 
was heading in the direction of the camp and they wanted everybody to be safe.
These two counselors that lived together, girl counselors, one of them went to bed 
about 10:00 because she wasn’t feeling very well. She assumed that the other counselor 
would come in; she was supposed to put the eight little girls to sleep and then come to 
bed. So she went to sleep and about 2:00 in the morning she heard steps coming up. It was 
real dark in her room, and they didn’t have lights because the electricity went out because 
of the storm. She assumed that the other counselor she was living with came in and was 
asleep. She heard this gnawing sound on the door, and she got really scared because she 
thought this man was going to come and rape her and kill her. She pretended not to hear, 
she hid her head under the pillows and tried to go to sleep and this sound continued, and 
then eventually it stopped. She wasn’t feeling very well, so she fell back asleep.
When she got up in the morning, she opened the door. Her other counselor was on 
the other side of the door dead, with a hatchet in the back of her head. The sound that 
she had heard was that girl’s fi ngernails trying to scratch on the door to get her to open 
it. They never found the guy who escaped from prison, and he’s looming somewhere 
around, so beware!
Nineteen-year-old Erica narrated this legend in Vestal, New York, in Novem-
ber 1978. Erica had learned the story at Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Spring, 
New York, 10 years earlier.
This horror legend combines plot elements from the well-known legends “The 
Hook,” “The Hatchet Man,” and “The Roommate’s Death.” Most versions of 
“The Roommate’s Death” take place on a college campus; after hearing scratches 
on the door of her residence hall room, a female student finds her roommate 
lying outside the door with a knife in her back. This legend, which emphasizes 
young women’s vulnerability to danger, has been analyzed by a number of folk-
lorists, including Linda Dégh, author of “The Roommate’s Death and Other 
Related Dormitory Stories in Formation.” We can guess that the story of “The 
Counselor’s Death” became part of Surprise Lake Camp’s oral tradition when a 
female counselor who had heard “The Roommate’s Death” at college decided to 
create a new version of the legend to scare young campers.
Cornish
I went to Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Spring, New York, for two years. The biggest ghost 
story around was about Cornish, a hike trail that we often went on. Cornish was more of 

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Examples and Texts 89
a trail than a hike. It had been an estate a long time ago belonging to the Cornish family. 
When you go up there you see the rundown remains of the property. It was a huge estate, 
clearly belonging to a very rich family. Some say they raised Cornish hens and that’s where 
Cornish hens got their name, but I’m not sure if that’s really true.
The legend goes that a man lived there with his wife and two or three children, and 
one day he went crazy and killed them all with an axe. There are three notches in a large 
rock. People say that it took him three tries to kill his wife on that rock, because she kept 
moving her head, but on the third try he decapitated her.
Now it is tradition for the boys to all pee on that rock when they pass it, otherwise it’s 
bad luck. If you wake up with a red leaf under your pillow the morning after you go past 
Cornish, it means you’re going to die. I don’t know of that ever happening to anyone; 
I don’t think anyone has ever died at that camp.
Anyway, the end of that story is that after he killed his family, he burned down his 
house and just broke down. Some hikers found him a few days later shaking and rocking 
under a tree, the axe next to him. They brought him to a hospital and he’s still living in an 
insane asylum nearby. I forget the name of it, but my friend told me what it was.
Sam, a 19-year-old alumnus of Surprise Lake Camp, narrated this text in April 
2006. His story combines place-name legendry with the well-known horror leg-
end plot sequence of a man going crazy and murdering people with an axe. Stud-
ies of camp horror legends of that kind include Lee Haring and Mark Bresler-
man’s “The Cropsey Maniac” (1977) and my “Cropsey at Camp” (2006).