"He found himself gasping. It was dreadfully fetid, unbearably hot. In a paroxysm of terror he ripped and clawed at the satin until it was shredded. He made a futile attempt to dig with his feet at the earth from the collapsed burrow that blocked his retreat. If he were only able to revrese his position he might be able to claw his way through to air... air..."

The Graveyard Rats,

as told by William Forgey, M.D.,

in his book "Campfire Tales"

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"Would you like to tell a scary story? - Original and classic stories of adventure, ghosts, and other scary super-natural encounters. Chase ghoulies from a deep, dark grave; vindicate the misdeeds of a deranged madman; look over your shoulder for mysterious movements in the dark; travel in time to an Asian jungle; and discover swamps with eerie creatures from the night." - William W. Forgey M.D.

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DO YOU WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING ?

REALLY SCARY?

By William Forgey, M.D.

          The three books I've written on campfire stories were designed for the adult who needs a good, scary story to tell to youngsters In the 11 to 15 age group. Why scary stories? In 10 years of service as a scoutmaster to 3 different troops, and having worked with many other troops and groups of youngsters in summer camps and elsewhere, the most requested campfire event has been a good, scary story. Humorous tales, Indian legends, parables, and educational stories all have their place. And indeed I have treated my scouts to all of them. But the most often verbalized request -- almost a challenge it seems -- is "scare me." It might appear impossible to compete with the magnificent visual effects of videos and movies which particularly lend them­selves to adventure stories. But actually a good story can have far greater entertainment impact. A story requires the listener to use his own imagination -- the movie spoon feeds its visual and sound effects, it leaves no room for personal imagination. No experience in the visual arts is more powerful than the human imagination.

Scary story telling is a craft and there are certain skills and techniques which should be utilized to be the most successful. There are some aspects of this craft which should be employed for optimum results in the full introduction of this book.

Note: It is also important to outline a story you wish to tell by the campfire. Each of these stories in this book have such an outline, which will remind you of the points that must be made to make the tale complete. In fact, all three books listed below have an outline to assist the story teller.

Read a ghost story now. Following (below the three book links), are three stories, one from each of the three books written. Take a few minutes for yourself, and plunge into a scary, deranged, or mysterious world by reading a story, or all three. Dare to read, and see if you don't look over your shoulder next time the darkness surrounds you, and you hear a bump in the night.

Click on each title link, and you'll be taken to a web page within Amazon to see the cover, read more about the book, with an option to purchase the book. Click the <BACK> button on your browser to return to this page

-Use in this website has been authorized by the author, William Forgey, M.D.

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CAMPFIRE TALES

…Ghoulies, Ghosties and

Long-Leggety Beasties

THE STORY OF LA CUCARACHA MINE

As told by Doc Forgey

Illustration by Paul G. Hoffman

No so many years ago there was a group of young men, a little older than you boys, who were in college. They developed a hobby, and that hobby was to try and find buried treasure. They felt that the best way of doing that was to learn Spanish. Not regular Spanish, but the old Spanish, the Spanish spoken by the Conquistadores. These ancient soldiers had captured the Indians of Central America - the Inca, the Mayan, and Aztec. Stealing their gold and other treasures, they would bring it back to Spain in their galleons. They kept meticulous records because this gold was the property of the king. The instant they laid their hands on it, it was considered the king's property. So they kept very good track of it - their lives were forfeit were they to lose their accounting of these treasures.

In Spain at the Alhambra, the old royal castle where these records were sent, there are piles of ancient documents which are old records of the gold shipments. The boys felt that within those archives there could be some secret that might let them find a lost treasure. Indeed they studied these records carefully. They went over there during the summer and spent weeks and weeks poring over all sorts of these ancient journals. They had explained to the officials that they were there for academic purposes and therefore they were allowed access to the archives to help their studies.

One summer they found it. There was a record of a mine, a very rich mine located in a province that today is in southern Mexico. The Spaniards were running it with Indian slave labor and getting tremendous quantities of gold. Year after year the gold was being shipped back to Spain, when suddenly ... it stopped!

Something mysterious had happened. There was no more gold from this area.

Several things could have happened. The Indians could have mutinied and actually killed off the guards. But if that were to have happened, the Spaniards would have sent more guards and an army detail to restore order, for this was a very wealthy mine. So that could not have been it. A disease could have struck killing off everyone in that area. But again, with that much value to this mine, surely the mine would have been reopened regardless of the cost.

Something mysterious had happened to have caused this whole operation to have just closed down. The name given to the mine was: "La Cucaracha".

The three young friends took all of the money that they had and formed an expedition to go down deep into the jungles of lower Mexico. They had an approximate location from the old Spanish name of the district, and so they went to find La Cucaracha.

They went to small towns in the highlands on the jungle edge to see if they could get any clue about where some mysterious things may have occurred. In one town there was a bar with an old man there - he did not know anything about La Cucaracha, but he said: "You know, there is an Indian legend about a mine called: La Antigua, in the back country. It means 'The Old One."

That was the closest of anything they had come upon, the only thing that they had to go with, it certainly sounded mysterious. Maybe the Indians had a different name for the mine than the Spanish Conquistadores. They asked the old man to take them to La Antigua and they headed off into the jungles on their quest.

They cut their way through the thick underbrush, SLASHING their way through the foliage, and finally after they had gotten way out in the jungles they found a mysterious shaft. This shaft HAD to be man made. It was cut out of solid rock, a shaft that just disappeared into the depths of the bedrock of the earth.

They had to find out what was at the bottom of this pit. They dropped a rock down it ... they could hear nothing. So they rigged up a winch, and one of the guys climbed into a parachute harness. The Indians working with his two friends would lower him into the shaft.

He had a head light on. Soon he was below the surface of the ground and the darkness of the musty pit closed in around him. As he was being lowered further and further into the shaft, the rope started to slowly spin around. He slowly twirled around and around as he went down deeper and deeper. Pretty soon he could see no light from the top of the shaft at all. There was just a tiny light way up above as he was being lowered into that shaft.

As he was being lowered deeper and deeper, he noticed that the walls were turning a rusty brown color. As he went further down he thought that maybe he could see the bottom of this mine shaft. But he was spinning faster and faster, too fast to clearly make out what was below.

He needed to slow down, so he reached his leg way out to touch the wall of the mine shaft to stop the rapid spinning. As he did this, while spinning around, his foot literally gouged into the wall of the shaft - suddenly he realized what that rust color was. Thousands, millions of cockroaches had climbed up the side of the shaft - indeed as he looked further down he could see that the bottom of the shaft - the place to which he was being lowered - was a teeming mass of cockroaches. He was being lowered to his death, he was about to be buried alive by cockroaches!

AAAUUUGGGHHH! He shouted as loud as he could, hoping his friends would hear him and stop lowering him into that ocean of writhing insects.

His foot had dislodged the cockroaches on the walls and millions came cascading down, some falling, thousands flying, a suffocating mass of whirling wings. Trying to get his breath for a second scream he choked on a mouth full of the vile insects. They were in his ears, in his nose, his throat gagged with wriggling, struggling insects. He was suffocating, he was gagging - trying to scream and vomit at the same time.

He had learned the dread secret of La Cucaracha Mine.

And the closer to the bottom of this pit, closer to being buried alive in a mountain of cockroaches. All light from his helmet obscured by the massive number of insects, he knew he was closer and closer to the bottom of the shaft. THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF THE ROACHES POUNDED HIM ON ALL SIDES. HE COULDN'T GET HIS BREATH, BUT HE HAD TO BREATHE! Desperately he struggled for air.

They were down his shirt, swarming around his head, thousands, and thousands of them.

HELP!!!! His screams were muffled by the millions of whirling cockroaches. He shouted again, and he shouted again desperate for help amongst this nightmare of cockroaches. Cascading cockroaches were burying him alive!

Suddenly ... he jerked to a stop!

He felt himself being raised, raised as rapidly as he knew his friends could. Once on the surface, he laid gagging and choking trying to breath. His friends on the surface realized something was wrong. Thousands of cockroaches suddenly began swarming out of the entrance to the shaft, and when they saw that they stopped lowering him and immediately tried to get their friend out of there. They now all knew the secret of La Cucaracha!

Subsequently the village people made certain that the shaft was boarded up so that never again would somebody be lowered into the sprawling mass of insects that had taken over La Cucaracha mine.

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DAVE'S PAUGAN

Pronounced "pooh gone"

By Scott E. Power

            I had never believed in Indian legends until I met Dave, a Catholic priest and missionary from a remote trading post in the wilds of northern Manitoba, Canada, a land where Cree Indian legends prevail.

            Dave and I met while I was on a canoe trip into the north. He needed transportation from Neultin Lake back to his post two hundred miles north.

            Although I was a safe canoeist, I wondered about my new partner, Dave. But within minutes of our shoving off, he proved to be an accomplished paddler. During conversation he explained that he had lived in the north for five years. He was supposed to leave after one year, but he loved it so much that he insisted on staying. He said that the Indians had taught him a lot, but he still had a lot to learn.

            He explained that the Indians had taught him that every human being has a guardian angel called a paugan. The paugan is a protector or spiritual guardian. A paugan will only interfere with reality in extreme life-threatening danger. Typically, a paugan is a likeness of an animal. Each person's paugan is different. One person's paugan might be a cougar, for some an eagle or a wolf, but it is always an animal of sig­nificance, of great importance. But there is only one way for a person to discover what type of animal his paugan might be. He must fast and dream for a fortnight, for two full weeks of dedicated misery and deprivation. Only then will the Great Spirit show a person through dreams what his paugan is.

            Dave said at first he didn't believe in it. But one day, while he was canoeing with Indian friends north into the barrens to hunt caribou, they found themselves in a wide turbulent river. The water was freezing cold. Even though it was late August, the air temperature was below freezing. Dave and his partner managed to get ashore once they realized how dangerous the stretch of river had become, but the other canoe was blown into the main channel and was being swept into dangerous standing waves. An upset at this point could mean death for the two Indians, but there was nothing that they, or that Dave and his partner, could do to get themselves out of the raging white water. Suddenly there was a swirl under the canoe and to Dave's disbelief an immense moose rose up out of the water and the canoe was lifted upon its back. The moose plunged towards shore and then suddenly sank beneath the waves, but the canoe had been freed from the main current and the Indians were able to desperately paddle their way to shore.

            Dave was dazzled with disbelief about what had happened. An Indian called Julyja, a good friend of the minister, explained that the moose was his own paugan and it had saved him once before as a boy. The canoe had been saved by Julyja's paugan.

            Well, that was all Dave needed to see. He immediately believed in the reality of the paugan and he wanted to discover his own. He asked Julyja for instruction. Julyja told him to fast for a fortnight, swim naked with the fish, and dream each day. Whatever animal he dreamed about would be his paugan.

            The following summer, Dave did all of this faithfully. At the end of his ordeal it was revealed to him that his paugan was a wolverine, one of the most independent and fierce animals of the North Country. He had never been saved by his paugan and it had been years since he witnessed it in a dream, but he knew that it existed and that it would watch over him.

            I simply could not believe in any of this. Dave told me that my disbelief was wrong. The Cree Indian legend of the paugan was indeed true and if I didn't show respect my safety was questionable.

            Several years later, I was making a solo canoe trip on a remote stretch of river in the forest country of northern Saskatchewan. It had been a pleasant trip and I was in no hurry as I was enjoying that beautiful countryside and its occasional sand beaches. The weather had been the best that I had ever had on a northern trip. Perhaps all of this lulled me into a feeling of over-confidence, because a fateful decision caused me to take a chance through some rapids that proved to be a mistake. A rock ripped my canoe open from stem to stern, causing the entire craft to disintegrate in the swirling rapids. My gear had been secured into the boat; perhaps the turbulence of the water tugging on my Duluth packs aided in destroying the canoe. By the time I had swum clear of the rapids, there was nothing to be seen of my canoe or any of my equipment. My initial relief of being alive soon turned to fear. I was hundreds of miles from any help with no food, tent, or extra clothing!

            In some ways the first few days were the most difficult. I still had my mosquito netting and some insect repellent, so at least I wasn't eaten alive by the mosquitoes. There was plenty of fresh water to drink. But food - I had none at all. I became more and more miserable during the first several days. I didn't know a person could become so miserable, so hungry. I built myself a shelter and planned to stay in one place, hoping another party might come down the river that summer, or that an Indian trapper or fisherman would come through.

            It was just as well that I stayed, for soon the lack of food made me weak. Travel would have been impossible. My repellent ran out and the mosquitoes started adding to my misery by biting through my clothing. My only relief came when I went swimming naked with the fish in the cold stream, fish that I could never hope to catch.

            As the days passed I became strangely tranquil. And while each day becomes a blur in my memory, there can be no doubt that I was accidentally fulfilling the quest for a paugan. After almost two weeks, a fortnight as Julyja had told Dave, I lapsed into a trance. While in the trance I stared at the clouds above me and I slowly realized that the clouds were forming into a shape. I was lifted out of my daze by the realization that I was going to see my paugan. That it was going to reveal itself to me that I might be able to appeal to it for safety and deliverance from a certain death in this wilderness.

            But the clouds were forming a shape that I was unfamiliar with. It was, naturally, a white blob. The white image seemed to boil and slowly evolved into a strange image that I struggled to recognize. Then it suddenly dawned on me what I was seeing, what my paugan really was. It was not a giant creature after all. Oh, the cloud was large, but my paugan was not. I was staring at a cloud image of a grub! An insect that lived in rotting trees which for the mighty bears of the forest formed a main food source. They were fond of ripping apart dead trees to devour those tasty morsels.

            Yes, my salvation lay all around me in the forest. I came out of my trance and grabbed a large rock and easily found a rotten log. I pounded the log apart and revealed a swarm of the maggot-like grubs, scur­rying for cover from the daylight. I scooped up entire handfuls of the white bugs and shoved them in my mouth. The bugs squirmed as I crunched them. The taste was surprisingly wonderful. There was, of course, the crunchy sensation as they were squashed between my molars and there was the delightful juice that squirted into my cheeks with every bite. I was delighted at the first taste of food that I had experienced in two weeks.

            My life had been saved by my paugan. I could live for weeks; travel for miles, all because I had been saved by my paugan - the white maggot-like grubs hidden all around me in the rotten logs!

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Other books for the campfire storytellers;

Caroline Feller Bauer's New Handbook for Storyteller's, -- Stories, Poems, Magic, an extensive book which guides the reader in "how to" enhance their own storytelling skills. This is a wide ranging book with all kinds of "how to" information, which could even be beneficial to instructors and teachers, as well as the campfire storyteller.

Another author of stories for kids is John Bradshaw, his FUN CAMPFIRE GHOST STORIES , and compliment book FUN CAMPFIRE STORIES , do not end in a scary way. Humor is incorporated into the story, making the story telling an enjoyable and memorable event. Even the youngest reader/listener will beg for more and still sleep soundly at night.

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