DAY 5 -- THE CAMPERS

30 Days, 30 Gods -- A study of little-known religions

DAY 5
THE CAMPERS

One Friday four friends from Surprise, Arizona took off for a weekend in the woods. They were all killed before Monday, right out of a horror movie. Terrorized, sodomized, dismembered. Their possessions and parts strewn over several acres.

Residents of Surprise recovered, of course. There was a problem, however. Sightings of hitch-hikers late at night. Animals found killed with tent-stakes driven through their heads. The town paper, one morning, delivered with an entire section covered in the repeated words WE'RE COMING BACK in red ink.

Townsfolk knew what to do. Offerings. Plates left out on the porch at night - baked beans, roasted potatoes, chocolate-cracker-marshmallow s'mores. The haunting stopped.

It turns out the dead are easily distracted. Pay them a little attention and they mostly leave you alone.