The next story I want to share with you, was told to me by a friend who is almost like a big sister to me. Her name is Lana Taylor Edwards, she is nineteen and a Freshman at Holmes Community College. She is studying to be a nurse and often credits her time in scouts as laying the foundation of her future career. She is one of the few scouts I know, who has earned all three of the top tier rewards, those three being the Bronze Heart, The Silver Heart, and last but not least, The Golden Heart.

What makes her story special, well to me at least is Lana is not one to really tell ghost stories. In fact she tends to shy away from the bonfire when we start telling ghost stories. Now one thing you should know about Lana is she is a devoted Roman Catholic. She attends Mass three times a week and goes to confession once a week. She believes in demons and angels. And oddly enough she is open to the supernatural. Now, I'm a witch, a green witch, I come from a family of witches.

I say that because despite our differences, Lana has never pushed her beliefs on me. In fact, I've noticed a number of Pagan elements in her faith. The offering of coins to statues of saints, the belief that at the height of the Mass the host is transformed in the physical body of their savior Jesus Christ and the wine is transformed into his physical blood. And by taking both they are drunk and eating both his body and blood.

The use of holy candles and icons, the reciting of prayers, using a string of glass beads to count prayers and repeating the same prayer over and over again. Seeking the intercession of holy men and women in their daily lives. All kind of strikes me as Pagan.

Lana, like me also believes that if a person passes without finishing their earthly business, their soul may remain earthbound. She also, like me, believes this camp is haunted. She, like me, says she encountered a lost scout in the woods named Caroline who soon vanished after she settled her into her tent. And like Emma, she claims to have once encountered a girl named Hannah Goodchild at the annual prom.

Anyway, here's her story.

The Vanishing Hitchhiking Scouts
Told By
Lana Taylor Edwards

On side of the rural, country road that will take you to Camp Pocahontas you will find three concrete crosses. The crosses are only visible during the winter when the frost has killed away most of the tall grass and a few times during the summer the county road crews have mowed the tall grass. The crosses mark a scene of a tragic car wreck that claimed the lives of three scouts, their names are Josephine Farmer, Cookie Smith, and Sarah Hammer. How the wreck happen has been lost to time.I only know the wreck happen around nineteen seventy.

Now, I've been coming to camp Pocahontas since I was old enough to attend overnight camp. Normally a girl scout is allowed to attend overnight camp when she turns twelve years old. Roughly around the same time she gets her first period. Anyway, that aside I was sixteen when this event happen to me. You see my mom was a nurse, and well I always looked up to my mom. And as soon as I could I started taking every medical related badge I could.

First I earned my “First Aid Badge” and then I moved on to earn my “Advance First Aid Badge” and from there I went on to earn my “Nursing Badge” and from there I started helping at the camp clinic.
Now the clinic we have here at camp Pocahontas is this handsome, brick building that the first scouts, that to say the scouts that built it named “Heaven Can Wait”, The clinic is the only brick building in the whole camp and that makes it special. The clinic is also divided into several sections. The first area is a small waiting area with a desk.

Here we check in scouts, take their personal information and perform triage. From there we move into the main area of the building. A large room that used to treat wounded scouts. Most of the time we get scouts that have been either stung by wasp or bees, have been bitten by bugs, some have fallen down and sprained their ankles. Sometimes we get the odd broken bone.

Sometimes though we get cases of heat exhaustion, dehydration, stomach flu, and the odd snake bite. Those cases, save the snake bite, cause us to rush the scout to the nearby hospital, same with the odd sprained ankle and the broken bone. Oh and sometimes scouts come down with a cold or sinus infection. Those also require a trip to the big hospital.

Anyway I've gotten off topic here. One day, a few days into my first tour as a nurse helper here I was selected to go into town to pick up some much needed supplies from the local CVS. See due to a clerical error we'd run out of band-aids, aspirin, ibuprofen, printer paper, and printer ink. And well I'd drawn the short straw and had been sent on the supply run.

Now, it was early in the morning when I left the camp. And it was a twenty minute drive from the camp into the nearby town. And well, finding a CVS was like finding a needle in a haystack. But thankfully I'm good at finding needles in haystacks. So once I found it, I grabbed a buggy, and yes CVS has buggies, their mini buggies and their painted red. Anyway I took hold of one and started to fill it up.

And I mean I filled it. I filled it up to the brim. Beside buying band-aids, aspirin, ibuprofen, printer, paper, and printer ink I decided we'll also need rubbing alcohol, lysol, bleach, and well a bunch of other stuff. How much did I spend.. around eight hundred dollars. How did I pay? Well first I used my personal CVS rewards card to collect eight hundred dollars worth of reward points, and then I used a camp credit card of course.

Anyway after my little shopping spree, I decided I deserve a reward. So I searched for a Subway and treated myself to a Subway. And then well I decided to head back to camp. Anyway as I was leaving the city, the sky started to darken. And by the time I was pulling onto the highway it had started drizzling and by the time I turned onto the rural country road it was raining cats and dogs.

Anyway I slowed down and started to take my time. I leaned over the steering wheel and peered through the pouring, sheets of rain. It was then I spotted them, standing on the side of the road, well walking on the side of the road were three scouts, girl scouts, but their uniforms were kind of weird. They were dressed in heavy, forest green blouses, forest green skirts, brown woolen socks and their shoes were heavy, brown leather lace up things. The uniforms reminded me of the uniforms scouts wore in the fifty's and sixty's.

Now, I should have stopped and asked myself what three scouts in vintage uniforms were doing at least fifteen miles from camp and why in the name of God were they walking toward camp in a blinding rain storm. I should have, instead I pulled over and rolled down my window and then I hollered into the blinding rain.

“Hey!” I shouted.
At this the scout that was in the lead turned around. I remember how she looked, she looked gaunt, her eyes looked sunken in. And her lips seemed swollen. And then I noticed she seemed shivering. Her heavy, woolen scout tunic and skirt seemed to soaked with rain water.

“Get in!” I said putting my car into park. “I'll give you a lift back to camp!” I said smiling.

The three girls looked at each other, and one by one they climbed in. The scout in the lead took the front seat and the two others climbed into the back. Both seemed to be shivering. And I noticed all three looked soaked to the bone. Now, this was in the depths of a Mississippi summer, and the rain to me was a welcome change in the weather.

But as a student nurse, I knew it was a mixed bag of bones. I knew the rain would cool things down a little, and wash away the pollen that had clung to everything and make the air a little cleaner and a little cooler for a brief period of time. But I also knew the coming days would be hellish as the cool, clean air would turn hot and humid, and scouts caught out in the rain would come down with the sniffles. Colds,

Well it was a mixed bag, I knew the wind would cool things down a little, but the following days would be hellish as the air would become hot and humid and a new wave of summer colds would flood the camp.

“So.” I said turning up the heat. “What's going on? I mean what's up with the outfits? Are you guys cosplaying for an event or something?” I said, taking a deep breath.

The three girls looked at each other and then peered at me. And then they peered at me, they then rolled their shoulders and kept silent. And that silence lasted for a tense few minutes until the girl in the back decided to break the silents.

“We were leaving camp when something happened. Our car went off the road.” She said looking out the window. “The last thing I remember is our driver swearing and the car rolled down the hill, and the sound of tree limbs breaking and then everything going black.”

I blinked.

“It was raining really hard too, and I remember the car rolling and then feeling a sharp pain in my neck, and then darkness.” The girl sitting beside her said. “I remember the window shield started to break into thousands of little pieces and sharp shards of glass sprayed into our faces before the darkness,”

I felt myself becoming uneasy.

“I think our driver was drunk..” The girl sitting beside me said. “I remember he was drinking this 'Cough Syrup' from this amber colored bottle that he kept hidden in his coat pocket. He also had another bottle hidden in the pocket of his pants. He said he had a really bad cough..”

A tense period of silence followed again.

“Also.. why are you learning Japanese?” One of the girls said. As she reached down and pulled out a manga I had that was supposed to help me learn how to write, read, and understand Japanese.
“Oh!” I said thankfully for a semi-normal topic of conversation. “I'm thinking about going to Japan next summer. Cause you know I'm into stuff like Anime, Manga, Cosplay, and J-Pop,” I said smiling.

“You know..” One of the girls said as she peered out the window. “That weird.”

I blinked.

The three scouts all looked at each other. It was then I noticed how pale they looked, and then I noticed all three seemed to be covered in scratches and bruises. And the girl sitting beside me, well her face was a spider web of cuts, thin, shallow cuts, cuts that could have only been caused by shards of broken glass.

“So..” I said trying to find another topic of conversation At this point we were less than a mile from the front gate of the camp. “You girls gotta have a name.” I said smiling. “I'm Lana..”

“I'm Josephine.” The girl sitting across from me. “But my friends call me Josie.”

“And I'm Cookie.” Said the girl sitting behind me.

“And I'm Sarah.” Said the girl sitting beside her.

I nodded my head again.

“I'm going to take you guys to the nurse as soon as we get back to camp.” I said.

It was then that Josephine said something that chilled me to bone. It was not so much her words, but the way she said them. They were so earnest and so powerful that the shock of them nearly caused me to lose control of the wheel.

“I don't think the nurse could help us.” Josephine said.

“I don't think any doctor could help us.” Cookie said.

“We're dead after all...” Sarah added.

And then something happened that I can't explain. Josephine suddenly reached out and touched my shoulder,and the moment I felt her fingers touching my shoulder was the moment I felt my eyes going big as saucer plates. I found myself sitting in the back of a really old school car. And I was wearing a old fashion scouting uniform. You know the ones with a woolen, forest green blouse and a woolen forest green skirt, brown socks and soft, brown leather shoes.

And it was raining, raining so hard that I could barely see an inch out of the mirror I was sitting by. I could feel the wind buffering the car around and the driver, a man who appeared to be in his mid fifties was muttering something under his breath.

And then I felt myself being jerked to the side. The car squivered to the side and slammed me into the window. I then felt the wheels of the car leaving the road. I then felt myself being thrown forward. What happen then seemed to pass before my eyes in a slow motion. The sound of tree limbs breaking, and snapping filled the air, then I heard the windows starting to crack.

And then I felt a sudden spray of glass shards blow right into my face as I heard the windows crack. Jagged pieces of glass sprayed all over me, I felt them tear away my flesh. I heard screaming echoing in my ears, follow by shouting and soon I felt the car starting to roll over, I screamed, I felt my body being crushed. Crushed like a coke-cola can. And then darkness. Total darkness.

And then it was over..

The next thing I knew I was laying in one of the hospital beds we keep at the clinic for scouts who need to spend the night. I knew I was in the clinic because the first thing I noticed above me was the old school style ceiling fan and floors were wood and health posters covered every square inch of the room. Now, I'm not going to tell you what happens next. Mainly because it's all a blur. But the gist of it is this.

They had found me slumped over the wheel of my car a mile or so from camp. I was burning up with fever and raving about three girls I'd picked up. Well fever aside, nothing appeared physically wrong with me, so they carried me back to camp. Well one of the adult staffers drove my car back to camp. They then confined me to bed. According to them the fever raged for three or four days and for the whole three or four day period I kept tossing and turning in my sleep.

They said I kept repeating over and over three names. Those three names being Josephine, Sarah, and Cookie.

The End.