SermonStudio

I am going to tell you one of the little-known stories in the history of Pine Lake Camp. It happened a long, long time ago, when Don Mevis still had most of his hair, just a couple of years after the twenty-fifth anniversary of the camp. It is the story of "The Pine Lake Creaker."

It was a crisp, moonlit night, about this time of year. I remember it well because it was my first visit to Pine Lake and it was the week before Jo and I were married. I was counseling in Birchwood 3 with a group of six junior high boys. The week had gone pretty well. We were over the hump. It was Thursday night. We had had a long day of hiking around the lake, volleyball, a water carnival in the afternoon and, to cap it all off, a picnic supper and campfire out on the point. We told stories and sang songs around the fire until almost eleven o'clock. By the time I got the campers back to the cabin and into their sleeping bags it was nearly midnight, and we were all exhausted. At least, that's what I thought. It was then that I made a foolish, rookie counselor's mistake. I went to sleep before they did. I had yet to learn about the residual effects of s'mores and what we used to call Pine Lake bug juice. You mix four or five s'mores with a gallon or two of that high octane bug juice and pour it all into a post-pubescent camper with all of those raging adolescent hormones and you've got something truly dangerous. Six of them together in one cabin is an apocalypse waiting to happen. I know that now, after twenty-four years of counseling, and if I had that night to live over again, you can be sure that I would have bolted the cabin door and insisted on a long period of scriptural devotions. I could have read through First and Second Chronicles and maybe a few chapters of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, slowly, deliberately, in a quiet, meditative voice. This would have been followed by thirty or forty minutes of silent prayer. But I didn't think of that then, and to this day I cringe when I think about the consequences of my foolish negligence. What those young campers heard and saw on that fateful night has haunted me all these years. I can only now bring myself to speak of it.

I must have wakened when they closed the cabin door. There was a squeak in the hinges, and as quiet as they tried to be, they couldn't muffle that squeak. It took me only a few moments to realize that I was alone. There was a conspicuous absence of heavy breathing. I looked out the window in time to see the last boy disappearing around the corner of the trail. I jumped into my pants and set off after them. They stopped down by the shower house and began to confer among themselves. I ducked down behind some bushes, thinking I would sneak up on them and give them a good scare. As I drew closer, I overheard them plotting to raid one of the girls' cabins at the top of the hill. I listened long enough to catch the gist of their plans, and then I turned and made my way quickly back to the cabin. There was just enough time to give them a scare they would never forget. I took down the clothesline and grabbed the sheet out of my sleeping bag. I wrapped a pillow in one end of the sheet, tied it off with the rope and headed up the path ahead of the boys, looking for a low limb from which to hang my surprise. I found one around the bend, about a hundred yards from the girls' cabin. I threw the rope over the limb, adjusted the height, practiced raising and lowering it a few times, and then sat back to wait. It wasn't long before I heard them coming noisily up the path. I heard somebody whisper "shhh," and they became very quiet as they approached the bend. I was just about to drop the surprise and yell, "Boooo," in my best ghostly voice, when suddenly, out of the darkness, came the most unearthly sound I have ever heard. Creeeeeeek! It was bone-chilling. The boys stopped dead in their tracks, their faces turned pale in the moonlight. And then it came again, in a lower key, floating out on the mist that hung low over the lake and echoing back again. Creaaaaaaaaaaak! It sounded like the lamentations of some long lost soul, murdered perhaps by early Methodists in the Pine Lake woods, come back now to seek its ghastly revenge.

We listened and waited, and when the Creaker moaned again, to my great horror, the boys set off after it, straight through the woods. The sound seemed to have a hypnotic effect on them, pulling them along mindlessly, like zombies fresh from the grave. I trailed along behind, drawn with them toward the source of the Creeeeeeeek!

We came out of the woods by the nurse's cabin and headed up the driveway above the lodge. I could tell the Creaker was near now. The sounds were coming closer and closer together, one after another Creeeeeeeeek! Creaaaaaaaaak! We were led around to the back of the big house on the hill above the lodge. And then we saw it through the trees, perched on the deck that had been built out over the garage. It had great hairy legs and a shiny spot on the top of its head which seemed to glow in the moonlight. Creeeeeeek! Creaaaaaaak! We watched and listened for several minutes and then suddenly the Creaker rose up on its haunches and let out a deep gutteral roar. Aaaaahggggg! The boys screamed and took off running back to the cabin as fast as their legs could carry them, shrieking and whimpering all the way.

I was petrified at first, but still curious enough to want to get a good look at the creature. I drew nearer to the deck, hoping to get a better look at the Creaker before it disappeared into the night. When I saw it clearly, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was Don Mevis, the camp manager! He had on an old pair of Pine Lake shorts and a scruffy T-shirt with big black letters that read "World's Greatest Camp Manager." He was sitting in his rocking chair, sipping from a frothy mug of Pine Lake kool-aid, that special brew they mix up just for the staff, and looking out over his kingdom. Every time he rocked forward the chair went Creeeeeeeeek! And when he rocked backwards, it went Creaaaaaaaaaak! I watched for a few moments, until I saw Creaker's head drop and I heard him begin to snore (Agghhhhhh).

Not a word was spoken about the events of that night in our cabin the following morning, or at any other time during the rest of that week.

As for the Creaker, he still lives in the big house on the hill above the lodge. The deck over the garage has been closed in to make a large recreation room with a hot tub. Now, on moonlit nights, the only sounds that can be heard in the camp are great contented sighs and happy sloshing as the Creaker cavorts in the hot tub with his lovely wife, Elaine, and sometimes guests from the Executive Committee of the Conference Board of Camp and Retreat Ministries, of which I am a longtime member.

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Author's Note:

Donald Mevis is Manager/Director of Pine Lake United Methodist Camp near Westfield, Wisconsin. On August 21, 1993, John told this story at the 45th anniversary celebration of the camp and presented Don with a T-shirt with lettering which read "THE WORLD'S GREATEST CAMP MANAGER."