Camping Trip Horror Stories

by Laszlo Stein

Sequoyah High School, Pasadena, CA

Twice a year, Sequoyah takes 25 to 50 horny, moody, and just generally hormone-addled teens into forests and deserts miles away from hospitals. And many of these students have unresolved issues with others in their grade. So what could go wrong? 

Lucy P. ’26 has been at Sequoyah for her whole life. During her eighth-grade trip to Pinnacles, most of her group felt sick. “There was a spin-the-bottle game and someone was sick. And soon enough, there was an epidemic… it may have been mono” said Lucy. The Sequoyah camping group, filled with alleged mono-infected students, set up camp between a property used by a girl’s summer camp and a property used by an all-gender camp. During the night, the teens from the all-gender camp would walk to the Sequoyah campsite, “and they came over during the night and shook on our tents, and they were like, we're going to kill you… they were shaking our tents and threatening us… and that was our only interaction” she said. When they tried to explain what had happened to the counselors, no one believed them.

Mekaela F. ’26 says that the worst Sequoyah camping trip that she’s been on was her 9th grade Utah trip. Her group was walking through a river when she noticed a steep drop in the ground beneath the water. She noted the hole and planned to avoid it until she witnessed a friend of hers fall into it and come out unharmed. “I stepped forward and my foot completely drops down all the way to my knee or my thigh, and I was like, oh my god… my foot was stuck between these two rocks,” said Mekaela. She noticed that her group was moving away from each other and decided that she needed to take action. “I finally was like, f*** it, and I just yanked it out” she said. As Mekaela pulled out her foot, she heard a pop and felt a sharp pain in her ankle. She started to walk forward and noticed that her leg was numb. “So I walked on it for at least three days straight because I was exhausted, numb, and I couldn't feel anything.” During the trip she didn’t tell anyone about her foot pain except her friend Charlotte B. ’26, who told her that it was nothing to be concerned about. “Now I know that she was just saying that so that I kept going,” she reflected.

In the following days after she returned to base camp, her friends made a splint for her out of sticks and leaves. When she finally got home, she went to a doctor who informed her that she had a severe fracture and one of her toes was broken. She returned to school with “an ATV wheeler,” also known as a knee scooter. The trip left her with such a sour taste that she scheduled her wisdom teeth to be removed during the next camping trip. 

During that same trip, Lexi experienced visions. On the final night of their trip the group gathered around a campfire. Charlotte and Lexi were both panicked and jumpy. “At first it was just an alien shadow they saw behind a rock… and then Lexi goes, is that my dad?" Mekaela reported. “Charlotte and I were just f***ing around with each other, and we started seeing black figures and stuff, and I thought I saw my dad,” said Lexi. Lexi recounts not only seeing her dad but also seeing black rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. standing 30 or 40 feet away from her.  In other words, Lexi had a dream.

Eventually, Lexi got so scared that she requested that "Jump" (a Sequoyah camping director) go out and make sure they weren’t really there. Lexi admits that her visions may have been influenced by taking 9 Melatonin that night. “I just didn't really want to be present during the first day of the hiking trip” she said. However, the visions might have also been due to a lack of sleep and not having gone to the bathroom for several days.

Like many, Lexi had a fear of using the bathroom during the trip, which would have meant using a “wad bag" where she would have kept her toilet paper. So she pooped before she left for the trip and managed to hold it for the totality of the nine-day trip. When she returned home, she was still unable to go to the bathroom for another 3 days. In total, Lexi went without pooping for an astounding 12 days and nights, a Bible-worthy phenomenon.  

Max D. ’26 was extremely nervous about the bathroom situation during his 9th grade Utah camping trip. He knew he would not have access to bathrooms for four days. He was also aware that if he did need to use the bathroom, he would have to walk into the woods, deficate, and return with a bag full of the toilet paper he used. “It didn't go well. I pooped a lot more than I thought I would have… God, it must have been three times a day,” said Max. The used toilet paper bags began to pile up in a side compartment of his backpack. During this trip, he didnt have a pillow so he was forced to sleep on his backpack. “I had slept on my bag, but then the wag bag was in the pocket next to me, so I left it open… and God, it just reaked.” Max's other tent mates are still haunted by the stench. “It was the [stench] of rotting sulfur,” said Max. 

Vaughn W. ’24 says the worst Sequoyah camping trip experience for him was during his trip to Hastings Ranch in Monterey. On the first night of the trip he remembers feeling a pain in the left side of his back. When he tried to examine himself, he was unable to see the source of the pain and decided to ignore it in hopes that it would go away. That morning after the pain had gone away he asked his friend to examine his back. He was informed that a tick had latched onto his back. “It was just this bloody little bug sticking out of my side. It was low key nasty” said Vaughn. He panicked and got a hold of Field Studies Director Brian Eagen, who immediately grabbed a pair of tweezers. “He did a great job, but he couldn't get the last bit or the head,” said Vaughn. After around ten minutes of tweezers surgery, Eagen decided it would be best to go to the ER. “They did basically the same thing Brian did. Some doctor came in and got some tweezers and after some picking and some more tools, he got it out,” When Vaughn returned home after the trip he tested himself for Lyme disease and thankfully tested negative. 

Foster L. ’27 felt perfectly fine on the way to his Costa Rica trip two years ago. When the plane landed, however, he felt a pain in his stomach and dryness in his mouth. He spent the night awake, kept up by the pain of his stomach. That morning, after breakfast, he threw up. At this point, RJ Sakai, Director of DEI and Community Engagement, had heard of Foster’s sickness, so they decided to go to the local urgent care which was a ten-minute walk from where they were staying. When Foster finally got to the urgent care, things went pretty smoothly. They brought him in and did the standard procedures; they took his temperature weight and measured him. The doctors informed him that he would be given two shots. One in the left buttock and one in the right buttock. “I don't have a lot of social anxiety, but I also don't want RJ in the room while I'm getting two shots in my butt. So I had to figure out a very polite way to ask RJ to leave the room so I [could get the shots] in my butt. And I go, ‘RJ, would you be willing to leave?’." Of course, Sakai had already been planning on leaving the room. By the next day, Foster felt at least 80% better thanks to the shots.