Burnt

This took place last summer. I was almost 15 years old at the time of, as my girlfriend called it, "the encounter".

We went camping with my parents at some pond in Saranac Lake. It seemed like it took forever for us to get there, when we did we found out that all of the camp sites by the road were occupied at the time so we loaded our stuff in our kayaks and canoe, then we paddled out on the pond and found a small island a little way away from the road. We unpacked, set up the two tents and made a fire.

Later around 9:00pm my girlfriend, Rachel, and I went for a walk around the island. My little brother, Joey, begged to come with us so we let him come along.

We followed a path that looked like it had been used frequently. We looked in a few caves, and then we sat down by the pond on the other side of the island and looked at the water for a while. It was so quiet. It was like we were the only people on the earth.

On our way back to the campsite, we saw footprints on the path that were not there before. The prints were black, and appeared to be kind of burnt into the ground. Rachel thought that was kind of weird so did I.

At the camp, I told my Mom and Dad about the footprints. They, of course, didn't believe me. Rachel and I sat down by the campfire and roasted marshmallows.

My family went to sleep around 11:00 pm. Rachel and I were the only ones awake. We decided to sleep outside under the stars. Rachel loves the stars and she cant really see them in the city.

The Fire had died down there was only a few small flames left, barely enough to light the campsite. Rachel and I were sitting there; talking about how many different animals we could hear and we heard a huge splash. It sounded like someone threw a rock into the water. The splash echoed throughout the whole pond.

The next day, after we had breakfast, Rachel and I wanted to go out on the pond in the kayaks. We carried the kayaks down by the water and we saw black footprints coming from camp leading into the water. Rachel thought it could have been the people who were camping on the island before us. I agreed with her.

We kayaked to a few other islands and walked around on them for a while. There were footprints on them also. The footprints were the same size and they were black too.

Back at the campsite, Rachel and I made some sandwiches and talked about the footprints. It seemed like everywhere we went there were footprints.

That night we decided to sleep in the tent with Joey because it looked like it was going to rain. We stayed up late taking and we kind of dozed off for a little while.

About two hours later Rachel woke me up. It was probably 6:00am, and the sun was just peaking over the horizon. That's when we noticed that there was a hole in the tent the size and shape of a man. I thought what the hell? We went outside, there it was. Smoke was rolling off of the tall dark body. It appeared to be a man who was burnt to a crisp. Whatever it was took off.
My parents woke up and demanded to know what was going on and we explained to them about the man. They don't believe me. Rachel tried telling them about it, but they didn't believe her either.

That was our last day at the camp. We dropped Rachel off at her house and said goodbye. After unpacking Rachel called me and she told me that she found some info about Saranac Lake dating back to the sixteen hundreds. There was one article that said on Jackson pond, on the biggest island that a man was burned alive because he killed his wife and four children.

Rachel also found out that Jackson pond is now Polliwog pond and the big island in the middle is where we set up camp.