Camp Grounds as Potential Haunt Jaunts

I never considered camp grounds as potential Haunt Jaunts until I stumbled across an About.com: Paranormal Phenomenon post called "Camping Encounters with Monsters and Ghosts" by Stephen Wagner.

The only thing I normally think about when it comes to camping and ghosts is telling ghost stories around the camp fire. But Wagner's article related incidents of ghost and monster encounters around camp fires and campsites.

MONSTERS IN THEM THAR' WOODS

I used to camp all the time with my family when I was little. I loved it. I have a pretty active imagination, but I don't remember ever being afraid of the forests we camped near. The only time I ever got a little creeped out was when my cousin Mike started scratching on the roof of the camper shell covering the back of my dad's truck. It woke me up and I didn't know it was him at first, so...there was a wee bit of chaos until my dad told him to knock it off.

However, Wagner told some good monster camping stories. One about a family who encountered some kind of bear-like creature with yellow eyes in the White Mountains of Arizona. (Lucky them. I don't know which is worse: being scared out of your wits by some creature roaring and then suddenly charging into your camp, or camping near that same region and having your dog suddenly bolt out of the tent only to get sprayed by a skunk. Oh yeah, that made for a pleasant experience...)

Anyway, Wagner also told of other stories: a glowing beast that showed up in a field next to where some people had set up camp, and a green "humanoid like" creature that surprised campers near a lake in a nature reserve. (The last one creeped me out because apparently they fled the scene only to return later to pick up their gear but found their tent destroyed and all their gear in the lake.)

GHOSTS IN THEM THAR WOODS, TOO

Well, the ghost stories in Wagner's post didn't really have much to do with woods. But people did spot ghosts while camping.

One was a silver lady a girl in Australia spotted while camping with her family. The other one recounted a tale of a guy who had been camping with his girlfriend and woke up to see a ghostly form hovering over her body.

WHERE CAN I LOOK FOR THESE MONSTERS AND GHOSTS?

That's what I didn't like about the article. It didn't tell specifics about the ghosts sightings, as in where they happened, except in a couple of cases.

Like the creature that surprised the family camping in the White Mountains of Arizona. It at least gave you that much, but where exactly did the family have the experience? I don't know.

The other two monster stories were vague. The settings were described, but states weren't even mentioned.

The ghost stories did give some indication of place. The "silver lady" was spotted at "a beachfront caravan park near Killala Beach, New South Wales, Australia." The hovering ghost encounter happened "along an unpaved forest road in the Manzano Mountains in northern New Mexico."

Wish I could give you more to go on if you wanted to set out this summer on a camping Haunt Jaunt of your own to investigate these places, but...that's all I got folks.