Camp Creepy Experiences Another Year of Terror-ific Success!
Going on its seventh season this year, Camp Creepy is a weekend camp for Girl Scouts to get in the spooky mood! Camp Director, Chuck Iler, is so proud of the work he and the Girl Scout staff and volunteers have done to keep this show running.
At Camp Creepy, Girl Scouts get to have fun in all sorts of ways: Halloween crafts, costume parties, hay rides, pumpkins, and more!
The event takes place every year in October at Sandy Ridge, a Girl Scout camp of over 400 acres, at 3681 Girl Scout Rd, Bennettsville, SC. The crew uses existing buildings and forest land to create the main event for the camp: a haunted house!
The haunted house is built by staff every year in the Tall Timbers shelter at Sandy Ridge. The surrounding woods are also utilized: the workers create trails by wrapping plastic around the trees. It is important to Chuck and the other staff that the haunted house is different every season.
This year they added two new rooms and changed the path around so girls who attended last year couldn’t memorize the trail.
The haunted house isn’t too scary, though—there’s something for girls of all ages. “We run the haunted house in three ways,” Chuck says. “We do a full scare. We do a no scare with the lights off… and then we do a no scare with lights on and mask up.” So there are three versions of the trail, one for every scare level!
The scouts’ itinerary for the weekend looks like this: when the campers arrive on Friday, they get settled in and have a campfire that night. On Saturday morning, the girls do “pumpkin archery,” where they learn some bow and arrow skills by shooting at pumpkins! If weather permits, the girls can even go canoeing on the lake. Later that day, they do Halloween-themed arts and crafts, and they have an opportunity to get themselves some Camp Creepy merch!
On Saturday night, the girls go through the haunted house. Dressed in their costumes, they head to dinner, after which a hay ride will take them down to the trail. A campfire is set up down there for the girls to hang around while they wait their turn in the house.
Afterwards, the hay ride back to main camp is also a creepy trail. The scare actors from the house come out to wait beside the trail as the tractor goes by carrying the girls. Spooky! The night ends with a costume party–all of the girls are dressed up and get to hang out and dance. At about 10 pm, the girls go to bed and go home after breakfast the next morning!
Camp Creepy now has two weekend camps available, where previously there was only one. The crew also started setting up the camp a week earlier than that to prepare for the camp. “We would build on a Friday and Saturday while they were doing activities and… it took a lot of toll on people. So we decided to… do the build the weekend before,” Chuck states.
All this work has paid off: the girls loved the event! “It's such a great event,” Chuck says. Of course, you get some girls who weren’t scared at all, and a few that were a little too scared. But most of the troops and girls that attend are repeat visitors that love the camp. Overall, Chuck is very proud of how far Camp Creepy has come.
“It's a lot of work, but it's worth it to see the girls' faces. Hopefully next year we can open to the public on one Saturday… to see that would be awesome,” Chuck notes. Part of Camp Creepy’s success has been Chuck’s dedication to expanding the camp each year.
This event is very popular, and slots fill up fast, so be sure to keep an eye out for next year’s Camp Creepy! It’s bound to be bigger and better than the last.
~ Written by Special Guest Author Paige Blackburn - GSESC Writer, Content Editor Intern
