Listeners, Please note the following is an immersive audio
drama that includes strong horror themes and potentially
upsetting scenes for some audiences.
For those with specific phobias, please view our show notes or
episode bio for a list of content warnings.
For everyone else, you've been warned.
I say, Johnny, do you ever feel invisible it.
Depends on the day pal, but I sure have my moments.
We all do. That's why I've taken myself
down to Frank Mason's Men's salon, where I get my groovy
locks, an amazing mustache, treated with care.
What a coincidence, I also go to Frank Mason's men's salon when I
want to go from drab to fab. That is stellar and now the
folks at home can visit Frank Mason's Men's Salon and receive
a complimentary trim for the kids just in time for the end of
summer. Head on in and tell them Johnny
and Alan sent you to receive 1 free kids trim for each adult
cut purchased. And ladies, don't be fooled.
Frank Mason's Men's Salon has something for everyone this
weekend. You can go in for a free wash
with the purchase of a blowout. So folks, head on down to Frank
Mason's Men's Salon so you don't have to feel invisible any
longer. You'll be drowning in attention
before you know it. The night is still, the forest
dark, a distant screen, a Lantern spark.
Through tangled woods you make your way, where unseen eyes
observe their prey, A creaking branch.
A whispered. Name a chilling wind, an ebbing
flame. The path ahead is cold and
frail. Secrets weave through night's
thin veil. Old legends speak of spirits
near, of those who vanished, drowned in fear.
Moonlight fades and shadows swell on the trail.
To wanna tell. None.
Who's ready for archery? I know the past few days have
been boring with all the hiking trails roped off, but the
shooting range is all set. Can I get a mighty bear Roar,
Campers? Hello.
Where did they? You sure got me.
Whose idea was this? Mine.
Me. Did we scare you?
I'll let you know what I can hear past my heart pounding in
my ears. It started as a game of who can
hide the fastest. I told them Tiger Cabin is going
to win the trophy if we don't practice.
As a hiding trophy? Since when?
When did we talk to Thomas? 2 days ago.
Wow, what a coincidence since 2 days ago.
I bet you'll get the gold now. It's no hiding trophy, but I do
have Jelly beans for whoever gets the most bull's eyes.
You have more Jelly beans, and soon you might have more Jelly
beans. So far I think I have the
record. Wait, wait for.
Me. I'm sorry they got the idea to
scare you and I couldn't talk them out of it.
I get it. I just need a second.
They did a great job hiding this time, covered themselves up with
their flashlights in less than two minutes.
Would it even do anything? It doesn't hurt to try.
Besides, it keeps them occupied with the whole no hiking thing.
I'm starting to think we should just convince Miss Wade there's
a maniac loose in the woods and send everyone home.
Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.
Thomas was right. We have to do something.
Yeah, I'm just not sure staying here and hunting it is the thing
we have to do. Are you sleeping any better?
No, sort of. I thought the nightmares were
gone, but once we all talked I started remembering them again.
I realize I'm dreaming at least and can wake myself up.
What do you mean? I'll hear Andrew calling for me,
but it's wrong if I call back to him.
I have the urge to start walking.
This morning I woken myself up and realized I've started
getting out of bed. Why didn't you say something?
It's only been two days. At first I thought it was just a
coincidence, but now I'm not so sure.
That sounds like what's happening to Maggie.
It's just nightmares. Not as bad as before, but that's
all they are. My promise to lock you out of
the cabin still stand. Sarah, you don't understand how
bad it was. I was seriously scared and now I
know I have every reason to be. I'm sorry, I should have told.
You. No, you don't have to apologize.
Amanda was telling me about it during breakfast.
I'm just jumpy about it. She's getting worse.
I don't think she ever started getting better.
Amanda said she just walked out of the cabin, she had to run and
drag her back and now they're trying to scare the kids into
using more of a buddy system. Really.
Uh huh. Amanda's trying to convince them
that if they see anyone walking by themselves, they're supposed
to declare their buddies now and walk with them wherever they
need to go. Whoa, were you listening the
whole time? Not the.
Whole time. My friend Cleo is in Tiger Cabin
and she says she has two buddies now.
And one of. Them is miss.
Maggie. Everybody has Miss Maggie.
As a buddy. Is she?
Trying to run away. No, she isn't going anywhere.
Someone ran away. Someone's missing.
Do we have? To find them, I thought we were
going to archery, not hide and seek.
I don't like. That game, can we?
Play Marco Polo instead. No Dom, you have to.
Be swimming. For that game, I'll go first.
Marco. Actually, Miss Cassie and I were
talking about a story about. About a counselor that went
missing. What?
Well, that little prank you pulled had me pretty freaked.
It reminded me about something that happened when I was a
camper here. What was her name?
She was weird. It was my second year here at
Want to Tell Your First. Joan.
Yeah. I haven't thought about her in
years. She was a bizarre 1.
That's a good way to describe her.
Well, what was this story? Are you sure you want to hear
it? I think it's pretty scary.
When I first heard it, I couldn't even bring myself to
walk to the bathroom alone. Yeah, yeah.
I guess so will tell you, but then it's off to archery.
OK, maybe with an extra buddy or two.
So Joan was never supposed to be at camp.
Want to tell she didn't want to be here?
First of all, she hated the outdoors, like hiking and
camping, and even getting her to swim in the lake was like
pulling teeth. Joan didn't want anything to do
with the camp, the campers, or even the rest of the
counsellors. That's not true.
There was that one other counsellor, Howard.
See, it's. True, she was completely Wally,
Wally Blood and Dolly about him. The only time she wasn't
scowling was when Howard was around.
Anyway, like I was saying, Joan wasn't supposed to be a
counsellor, but something happened at home and she got
sent here instead. No one knew what it was, but she
was angry about it. Whoever had Joan for their cabin
was in for a rough time. I was so happy to be in Tiger
Cabin. Me too.
Not only was she a grouch, but she was just downright strange.
She asked for an electric fan for the cabin once, not because
it was too hot, but because it was too quiet.
Can you imagine the sound of nine other people snoring in
creaky bunk beds with rustily sleeping bags and the total
cacophony of crickets outside? Imagine thinking that's too
quiet. Joan would also go wandering off
on her own on occasion. I remember lunch was really slow
one day because she just didn't show up to help cook or serve
it, so her kiddos and the four other counselor had to pick up
the slack. Lunch came and went and nobody
had seen or heard from Joan. Our cabin was on the clean up
shift that day when she finally wandered back in after she
stormed up to her Co counselor and demanded to know where they
had been the whole time. She claimed to have been ditched
in the woods during their hike. Now, to be honest, if Joan was
in my cabin, I'd have left her behind too, but it didn't make
any sense. The trails are really well
marked, and it's not like Joan didn't know how to get back to
the main area of camp when she realized she was alone.
Why didn't she just come back to camp and wait for everyone else?
Everyone thought she was sneaking away to get out of
work, but she genuinely seemed upset.
No one was really sure what was going on.
I think we all just brushed it off as her being angry about
being at camp. I accidentally eavesdropped on
our counselors and they were talking about the weird stuff
Joan had said. She said she had come back to
camp, but that the whole place was completely empty.
Nobody at the mess hall, nobody at the archery range or even the
director's cabin. Even the stray cats that usually
hung around the porch of Wolf Cabin were missing.
I didn't know that. Anyway, the point is, things
were weird and strange. People would go up to talk to
her while she was working and she'd jump and get mad at them
for hiding from her and scaring her when they weren't even
trying to startle her. Some of the boys were dumb about
it though and tried to do it on purpose, but not after what
happened at the mess hall. Joan got really mad at some
counselor one day, I forget his name, Our cabin was coming back
from the lake when we heard a huge commotion from mess hall.
The firewood stack had been completely knocked over and Joan
was yelling, and I mean yelling at someone.
Our counsellor Bev ran up to see what was wrong and there Joan
and this other boy was, and she was giving him an earful going
on about how she didn't understand why he and his
campers couldn't just leave her alone.
His name was Wayne. That's right, Wayne.
Bev ran in and was trying to talk to them both, but she was
confused. Joan was supposed to be with the
rest of her cabinet, The sports field, and Wayne's crew was
exactly where they have been all afternoon, doing their craft in
the mess hall. Joan was saying that she was
looking for her campers because they had apparently run away
from the sports field when she wasn't looking.
She kept saying over and over, you weren't here, nobody was
here. It was empty.
I was alone. Wayne wasn't having any of it.
He was tired of putting up with Joan's attitude all summer and
was pushing back, saying stuff like if you had been paying
attention you'd know we were here the whole time.
And just because you're having a miserable time here doesn't mean
you have to bum the rest of us out.
Something he said must have struck a nerve with Joan because
the next thing I knew she pushed him.
He stumbled back and his foot caught one of the logs for the
fire and he fell. You were there.
He landed hard. I still remember the crunch as
his arm broke underneath him. I don't think she meant to hurt
Wayne, but she just stood there crying.
His campers were freaking out and their other counselor was
trying to calm him down. Bev sent someone to get Miss
Wade and started taking care of Wayne.
She was the best one at first date so it was good that she was
there. Miss Wade got there quick and
drove him back into town to the hospital for a cast.
Camp's not that big, so pretty soon everyone had heard about
what happened and people started saying that Joan was going to be
leaving as soon as her parents could come pick her up.
From the sound of it, it seemed like they would arrive the next
day. That night was the volleyball
tournament. All the cabins would be
competing in a bracket to see who was the best, so everyone
was down at the pit. Nobody wanted to miss it, so
Joan was dragged along by Miss Wade too once she got back, but
kept under careful watch. At least for a little bit.
Things started getting intense with the games and before anyone
could notice, Joan slipped away. At first we thought that she had
just gone back to her cabin to pack or be by herself or
something. Howard offered to go and look
for her, but she wasn't at her cabin and all of her things were
still in the drawers. Missus Weed obviously started to
worry. If she had wandered off and
gotten lost, who knows where she might have ended up.
So they called the rest of the tournament and sent all of us
campers back to the cabins. A few of the more seasoned
counsellors went out armed with their flashlights to go find
Joan. Yeah, it was tense on the way
back. Obviously we were worried about
Joan and where she could have gotten off too.
But some people were worried about Joan, if you know what I
mean. We had seen her push Wayne and
break his arm earlier in the day, and someone started saying
something about how she could be waiting in the woods to nab us
and take us away or some other far out idea like that.
We didn't believe it, obviously, but it was easy to be freaked
out as we walked back. It was a full moon that night.
The camp was bright with it, and the pine trees almost looked
silver. It was still weird.
The cicadas were kind of muted, and even the crickets were
quiet. Wolf Cabin is pretty close to
Toad Cabin and so we thought we'd maybe see Joan through the
window with a flashlight or something.
As we got close, the cabin stayed dark and still.
US campers got inside and started wordlessly getting into
our pyjamas, ears straying to hear anything.
Most nights we'd be giggling and talking and whatever else, but
not that night we got into bed and we lay quiet.
Not too long after, we heard Wolf Cabin trudge into their
cabin again. Quiet flares of their lanterns
and flashlights occasionally cut through their window and
splashed across the floor of ours, where they were all
switched off. None of us slept well, we were
pretty restless. I couldn't sleep at all.
I was laying in my bunk wide awake.
I tried to go to sleep, but I was so nervous about everything
going on with Joan. Just laying there thinking about
everything that had happened so far, it really had me freaking
out. I was starting to hear things,
or so I thought. It wasn't until there was a
large clunk out on the doorstep at the cabin that I realized I
had left my hiking boots out there.
I don't know what came over me. I knew it was stupid, but I
crept out of my bunk, grabbed my flashlight, and opened the door
as quietly as I could. Then I clicked on my light out
on the steps of the cabin. Like one of my boots tipped
over. Like someone had kicked it or a
raccoon or something knocked it over.
I swung my flashlight around to try and catch whatever it was.
I think a part of me both hoped that it was Joan and that it
wasn't. I didn't catch anything in my
flashlight beam, not directly at least, but I did see a branch
rustling at the end of the clearing.
Maybe a deer or something. Again, I don't know what came
over me, but I felt myself being drawn and pulled toward that
edge closer to the dark. Ahead of me, I heard another
rustle. I could feel the flashlight in
my hand, heavy, slippery with sweat.
I didn't know what I wasn't seeing, you know?
Did you keep going? I heard another thump behind me
from where my boots were, and I whipped around and I swear, I
swear on my life, I saw it clatter across the deck.
That force that was pulling me into the forest vanished, and
instead I found myself rooted to the spot, clutching my
flashlight, heart thumping in my chest.
I still couldn't see anything. Then there was a bang.
The sound of a cabin door was somewhere else, and I jumped,
swinging my light over to see where I had come from.
As soon as my light left the wolf cabin's porch, I heard the
screaming. Wait, you saw Joan first?
Yeah, she was sprawled out across the steps, shielding her
eyes from the beam of my flashlight.
She kept wailing. Who are you?
I just started screaming, and
between the two of us, the rest of the cabins woke up.
Bev and our other counsellor dashed out first, and one of
them got me back inside while the other counsellors went to
help her. Nobody's really sure where she
had been when Miss Wade showed up.
Joan claimed to have been in camp the whole time, running
around for hours searching for us.
When she didn't find us in the cabins, she tried checking the
trails. She was trenched in sweat and
covered in leaves, scrambles and scrapes.
Her eyes were wild. Every time someone got close,
she'd grab for their clothes and ask over and over, Are you
really here? Am I really here?
I remember Miss Wade sent everyone back with their groups
and took Joan to stay up at the main cabin before breakfast the
next morning. She was driven to town and Wayne
came back with a cast. We all signed all right.
Don't know if anybody heard from her after that, not even Howard.
Everything went off without a hitch after she left.
No more disappearing counselors, no more screaming at night, and
no more Joan. The girl that was never meant to
be here wasn't. Hey, do y'all want to be my
buddies? Yeah, three buddies.
You got to be my buddies. I wanted to be buddies.
Sorry. Maisie to see.
You all right? Let's grab our bows and go over
archery safety one more time. Who can tell me which way the
arrow points? Do y'all remember Joan?
Were you campers back then? No, that was the year before me.
I heard rumors about it. I started the same year as
Amanda. Yeah, that was weird.
Now that I think about it, that was the first year I remember
really creepy stuff happening. Camp's always been funky, but
that was off. Well, I was just wondering, what
if that's kind of what Maggie's dealing with?
She isn't disappearing, though. She's still here.
At camp, it could be a perception thing.
My dreams mirror Andrew's voice. It's all how we're perceiving
stuff, right? Maybe it can't actually do
anything right now. It's just messing with our
heads. Andrew's gone, Sarah.
I know what I saw. It wasn't an illusion.
And that hiker was dead. Super dead.
I think I get what you mean. It does seem to be trying pretty
hard. Maybe I'm not making it clear.
Dead guy? Puppet.
Thomas, don't say it like that. God, you're right.
Sorry, walking corpse. Thomas, listen, I'm serious.
If it's changing how we view things when we're awake and
doing OK, what do you think Maggie is seeing?
Amanda says. She's not sleeping and she's
definitely not eating very much. Can we actually do anything
about it though? I don't want anything to happen
to her. She's already not herself, and I
don't know how much worse it can get before we go home.
So let's go talk to her about it.
We could have her lead us to wherever this thing is hiding.
No. We aren't going to use a recipe.
We just, I mean, Sarah's right. We have to at least tell her
she's acting off. She might have no idea.
Is that any better? Do you have any other options at
all? Not.
Really. Are you sure we don't want her
to lead us to wherever this thing is hiding?
If it came up through the fire pit or tried to, it's probably
not licking its wound in a cave somewhere.
Sure. If it needs a new body, it's
probably haunting us to get one. The world's aren't exactly
crawling with hikers right now. So when do we talk to Maggie?
Soon I'll see how she's doing tonight and maybe we can talk to
her about it tomorrow. Why wait?
Because. I'm going to accuse her of being
possessed, Tom. It's weird.
I can't just March over to her and ask her what's wrong with
her. Sure you can.
You just find her and say, Maggie, I think you're
possessed. And I think you've lost it.
Think about it, maybe we'll catch it off guard.
Catch what? Off guard, Maggie.
Wait, where are you going? To help a bunch of second
graders keep an eye on my friend before she goes wandering off
into the woods. I'm sure she's OK.
I have a bad feeling about this. Come on, Mark, don't be all doom
and gloom. We figured out this thing's
motive and we're going to cut it off at the pass.
Thomas already dealt with a dead guy, it's not like it can get
any worse. Credits to the cast in order of
appearance. Tory Dr. as Alan Wilson, Geoff
Moats as Johnny Cowan. Marlon Dancehooey as the
Narrator and the Monster MV Lee as Cassandra Nelson.
M Cross as Sarah Davis. Jay Wassell as Amanda McMillan.
Frederick Powers is Thomas Anderson.
Aman HK is Mark Green. Additional voices by Meg
McKellar, Martin Green, Kelly, the Kelhop and credits to our
crew. Executive producer and associate
writer Erin Valentine. Lead producer and associate
writer Seth Bridebel. Lead writer Adele King, script
editor and law keeper Eli King. Lead audio engineer, composer
and associate writer Meg McKellar, Audio engineers SD
Hernandez and Jacob Gucci Yamaguchi.
Lead visuals artist Dexter Valentine, Visuals artist MB
Lee. Thank you for listening to 1.7
Miles to Lake Guanatel, a Honeydew Studios production.
We hope you enjoyed. Tune in next Saturday for a new
episode.