A Fear I Have Never Forgotten

While I remember having the usual childhood fears that most children seem to have, there is one fear that I have never forgotten even as a mature adult. When I was a child, I went to a Catholic summer camp for several summers. The first summer I went, I was only five years old. I was one of the youngest girls at the camp and while I was dealing with homesickness, I was also dealing with teenage counselors who delighted in playing tricks on us and telling us scary stories around the campfire.

I could deal with the tricks even though they were irritating and frustrating at times, but the scary stories at night were almost more than I could handle. One that I remember in particular is the one about "The Hand." This particular story was about a hand that was separated from its body and went around strangling people. My counselors were quite talented in making this story seem very realistic. I guess because I was the youngest camper there, they took great delight in trying their best to scare me as much as possible. Believer it or not, they succeeded. I would wake up many nights during the two weeks of camp terrified that the "hand" was coming to get me, but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone of my fears and be comforted.

As I grew older, I was able to listen to these scary stories and not allow them to frighten me as much, but I have never forgotten the particular story of "The Hand." While I don't wake up in fear as an adult because of this story, it affected me enough that I never told it to my own children when they were little.

I don’t think the counselors truly realized how terrified I was because of listening to their scary stories. I think they sincerely thought they were entertaining all of the campers and giving us a good time. While I was often traumatized at camp, I still wanted to go back every summer and did so for several years. I am lucky I was not affected permanently by being so frightened at summer camp. However, these experiences taught me to be careful with my own children when they had their own fears. I always tried to take their fears seriously no matter how trivial they sometimes sounded to me.