The following story was told to me by Lana Edwards, Lana is a Junior at Benton Academy and a long time girl scout who has just completed all the requirements to award her Gold Rewards. The Gold Reward is the highest honor a girl can earn in her scouting career. Anyway she swears this story is true. And given Lana is not the type to make up stories, and given my own paranormal encounters and many other paranormal encounters I've written about so far. I'm going to take her word at face value.

When I was twelve, I was working on my merit badge that required me to spend about three or four alone in the woods. It's not as bad as it sounds, though you are only taking what you can carry with you on your back. Hunger and thirst are your two worst enemies if you don't mind the mosquitoes, snakes, ticks, ants, and leeches. And the other creatures that make the woods their home.

I found it peaceful enough. My campsite was located deep in the hills that surround the camp. I was surrounded by pine trees, and the location I'd chosen was near a creek that was filled with water. Some parts of the creek were deep enough that I could even fish it. So if push came to shove and the rations I'd carried with me ran out. I could if I needed to fish for my supper.

Of course being out in the woods, alone at night is spooky, you hear things, and sometimes your mind starts to play tricks on you. At times like that you gotta just take a deep breath and try to keep your cool. And keep reminding yourself that the sounds you hear outside your tent are nothing more than the sound of nature.

Anyway with that in mind. I did my best to keep calm, you see my first night alone in the woods, I kept hearing this disembodied voice calling out through the undergrowth. The voice seemed strained and seemed to be pleading for help. At first I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me and the voice was nothing more than the wind blowing through the branches and brambles.

The second night the voice grew louder and it seemed to right beyond the small clearing of my campsite. I spent the better part of that night wide awake. As the voice seemed to grow louder, and louder with each passing second. It also seemed to be growing clearer and clear with each passing second. A clear and audible cry for help seemed to echo through the woods and into the confines of my tent. The voice, I could tell, belonged to a girl around my age, who seemed to be in incredible pain. You could feel the distress in her voice and it was almost soul crushing to hear her loud cries echoing through the brambles, and undergrowth of the forest that surrounded me.

Anyway the third day dawned bright and early. And like always I went down to the creek to fetch some water to boil, my bottle water had lasted only for the first few hours. And so I'd been forced to hike down to the creek and fill an old iron kettle I'd found in the woods with water. Of course I scrubbed and burned the kettle clean before filling it with water the first time. Anyway I'd fill the kettle with water then set it over a fire and wait for it to boil, once it finished boiling I'll let it cool and that would be my drinking water for the day.

Now I've always been something of a tea aficionado and one day I dream of working in an anime maid cafe where I can put all the useless information I have about different kinds of teas and how to prepare them to good use. And I'd carried some loose tea with me. Having a cup of tea was my way of rewarding myself for getting through another day in this hellish landscape infested with all manner of creepy crawlies.

Now that day had really been rough on me, and I'd drank more than my fair share of water trying to keep hydrated as I toiled chopping to my campfire going. The first thing you learn when you're camping is to build a fire, you need a fire to boil your water, cook food and keep the occasional wolf or coyote, and even the rare bear. All three call the forest and woodlands of Mississippi home.

But a fire, once started, needs to be fed. And to feed a fire you need a lot of fallen branches, twigs and dried leaves. Fires are greedy things and often need to be fed around the clock in order to keep doing what they do. So by my third day I'd somehow managed to deplete my stockpile of firewood and had spent the better bar of the day searching the forest for more twigs, branches and fallen limbs to burn. That had caused me to become thirsty. As the weather had turned, the temperature was rising and I was sweating like a pig.

Anyway, back to the story, it was late afternoon, the sun was starting to set and I heaved my metal kettle over my shoulder and started to walk toward the creek. I had one more night to spend in the forest and I'd have completed all the requirements for my badge. Anyway I filled the kettle and returned to my campsite and set the kettle on the fire to boil. I then decided I'll go ahead and get a quick bath.

Now, bathing in a creek is rough, don't get me wrong. But my blouse was sticking to me and I felt gritty and grimy and plus my hair felt horrible, since it had been a few days since I washed it. So I decided while my water boiled I'll get a bath and then settle down for a light supper of tuna fish, trail mix and a candy bar for an after supper sweet.

Anyway, I had just reached the deepest part of the creek. And I started to strip off my blouse and my shorts and hang them on a nearby tree trunk along with the small towel I'd brought with me when I heard that same voice calling out again.

“Help me! Please help me! They're after me! There after me! I've fallen, I've fallen and I can't get back up! Please help me!” The voice called out. This time I'd gathered my courage and decided to follow the voice. I followed the voice for a long way, about two miles till at the source of the spring I spotted a girl around my age. She had fiery red hair and a trembling figure. Her uniform struck me though, it looked old and worn out.

“Hey!” I cried out as I started to rush toward her side. I bent down and noticed she wore a forest green skirt and her leg seemed to be badly bruised maybe even twisted. It was clearly broken and twisted at an odd angle. She must have been in horrible pain. Her face seemed twisted as she struggled to breath. Anyway I bent down and took her by my side.

“Hey! I'm Lana Edwards, Troop 3979 Out of Benton.” I said. Its kind of a thing you see among us scouts to always greet each other with our first and last name followed by troop number. That way we could place them in the proper troop or know who to contact. If we ran across a lost scout or in this case a hurt scout in the woods.

“Coraline Upton.” The girl whispered into my ear as she struggled to lift herself up. “Troop 3978 Jackson, Mississippi.” She said as she flopped back down, her chest seemed to rise and fall with each breath she took. I could tell she was almost struggling to breathe.

Now if I was allowed to bring my cellphone with me. I could have made a call and gotten somebody from the main camp up to my position in about fifteen minutes. Okay more like twenty minutes, but one of the rules that they strongly encourage in scout camp is you keep things like your cellphone at home. But, let's be real here. There is about a one in a million chance you might stumble into an area that has cell phone reception and scouts at the camp have no access to power to charge the damn thing. Plus access to broadband? In your dreams.

So what is a cell phone then? A one hundred dollar paperweight. Anyway with no phone and with the sun setting fast, I did the only thing that I could think up. I moved over to Coraline, and I picked her up and carried her back to my camp. I knew tomorrow some staffers would check on us and give us just enough rations to help us make it through the last day and night. And so in my head I started to think of a plan.

“Here.” I said as I reached down and lifted the girl onto my back. “I'm going to carry you back. Back toward my campsite.” I said as I lifted the girl up and picked her up and so I started to carry her back to my campsite. Like I said before I was two miles away from my campsite so like girls we started to talk.

“So Coraline.” I said, taking a deep breath. “You said they were after you? Who's after you?” I said, taking a deep breath as I started to climb up the steep hills and hollows. I was breathing hard, I've been asthmatic since birth and this was really pushing me.

“Some girls from my troop.” She whispered as clung to me, it was odd she was light as a feather. Now I did not have a watch or anything like that on me. But about time I reached my camp the sun had set and the wind was starting to rise and it made a howling sound as it rushed through the trees. And on the wind, I swear and I mean I swear on the old family bible that I heard giggling and laughing. It was a taunting kind of laughter that seemed to make the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.

“There coming.” She said as she watched as I placed her down inside my tent.

“Nobody is going to hurt you!” I whispered and with that I started doing my best to give what first aid I could. Now I want to be a nurse, I've always wanted to be a nurse, and I plan on enrolling in Nursing courses this coming autumn at a local Junior College. Anyway up to this point I'd taken on every first aid badge course I could and had earned every first aid badge they offered to girls my age. And I had a pretty well stocked first aid kit in my tent.

The laughter grew louder and louder as the seconds passed, I worked at a fever pitch pace. Once I'd done all I could do, I whipped up a little soup, okay it was more like chicken flavored broth and slowly I spoon fed Coraline. I don't know what I was thinking, but maybe if she got something hot in her, she would make it through the night and her strength would be restored a little. I then gave her my sleeping bag and well I noticed she was out like a light. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully enough.

But then I remembered her words. 'There's coming.' and with that I reached down and picked up my hatched and stepped outside the tent. I spent the rest of that night standing guard over the front of the tent while all around me, just beyond the protective ring of my fire the evil laughter seemed to grow stronger and stronger with each passing second.

And that silence.

I must have fallen asleep, I don't remember falling asleep. After the laughter stopped, I must have because when I woke up, I saw the morning sun streaming through the branches of the trees and forming halo's on the forest floor. Birds perched on the withered branches of the forest sung their morning songs of worship and all seemed at peace.

It took me a few minutes to get myself together and then I remembered Coraline. I quickly rushed into the tent and blinked, the tent was empty. Totally void of life. But my sleeping bag, my sleeping bag was still zipped up and you could still see the imprint of Coraline's head upon the pillow I'd placed under her head. I was beyond confused.

Then I remembered an old scouting tale. I'd decided to include the tale here. It's a popular story, told around campfires all over Mississippi. I'd figured including this tale would be a fitting end to my tale and might bring this strange tale into a fitting conclusion.

The Voice in the Woods
A popular Girl Scout Campfire Tale

We've all heard stories about it. Some among us have even heard it ourselves. A voice that calls out for help in the middle of the night. mostly when one of us is alone in the woods. A scared little voice, one begging for somebody to come and render aid. And many times, we've gone out and searched for the source of the voice. And no matter how hard, or how long we searched, we've never found the source of the voice. Well there is a story, one that tells us the origins of the voice.

It seems that long ago there was a girl scout by the name of Coraline, she belonged to local scout troop out of Jackson, her troop number was 3978. Coraline was a shy, petite little girl, and was often bullied and her fellow scouts. No matter how much she tried, she could never really fit in. She was the oddball and the black sheep of her troop all rolled into one. One night, during the summer of '73, Coraline was taking her 'Simple Meal' and 'Rustic Camping' merit badge test. Out here in the brush.

And that's where the road divides. One branch of the story goes like this, there were three girls in Coraline's troop. Their names were Ruth, Sarah, and Ashley. They formed something of an unholy trinity in her life. They seemed to take great delight in teasing and tormenting her. Under the cover of darkness, around the time of the new moon, they were said to have crept up upon Coraline while she was coming back from fetching water from a nearby creek. With murder in there eyes they picked up three large branches and with the speed of greased lighting they struck her all at once. Once in the head, once in the chest and once in the knees.

And like a sack of rocks she dropped to the ground. They say then they all ganged up and killed her, they also say they hid the body in one of the many rocky caves that dot the 'Band Lands' the area just north of camp. And that the voice you hear late at night is her calling out for help and Justice.