A: “Um, so at my summer camp, which is located on Catalina Island in Toyon Bay, specifically.”
Interviewer: “What’s it called?”
A: “It’s called Catalina Island Marine Institute, CIMI, and there’s basically this big hill that you can hike up and climb, and at the top of it there’s kind of, like, a chimney, basically just a chimney stand. And so the story is that there used to be a house up there, and it was a wife and a husband, and they had a kid, and it was a boy. And they were playing or something, and the kid fell off the cliff. And the mother went over, ran over, saw the kid dangling there. And for a moment, was like, Oh my God this is perfect. I wanted a daughter – something about that. So then, the kid plummets to their death. It was tragic. The husband sees it as a tragedy. No one knows that the wife, like, could have saved the kid potentially. They have another kid, ends up being a girl, and when she’s about six years old, they’re playing again, and the kid, once again, slips off the cliff and is hanging off the tree, and the mom rushes over and tries to save it. And the kid looks up and goes, Are you gonna save me this time, Mommy? Also, plummets to their death. The mom is obviously so, like, traumatized and, um… You know, is very, like, distraught by what just happened and what the kid said to her that she lit the house on fire and committed suicide. And the only thing standing is the chimney now. And so the husband wasn’t home, and came to find only the chimney left standing without the wife and the kid.”
Interviewer: “Wow. What did the husband do after?”
A: “I don’t know. Yeah, but that’s, like, the ghost story. And so the ghost of the wife, like, haunts the camp. And the kids.”
Interviewer: “How old were you when you first found out?”
A: “I was in late elementary school.”
Context: In class, we were discussing ghost stories. A. went to camp at Catalina Island Marine Institute. At CIMI, this is a ghost story that is passed down from generations of kids at the camp. It is based on an abandoned chimney that is at the top of the hill on the island there and how the house came to be burned down, along with the ghosts that came with the event.
Analysis: This story is a good example of a camp ghost story that gets passed down between kids to make a place feel more mysterious. I have never heard of a camp without a ghost story or legend because those aspects are part of the camp experience and create a community within that tale. Inside info that only camp members are in on. The legend connected to Catalina Island Marine Institute takes something real, that being the chimney at the top of the hill, and builds a dramatic, creepy backstory around it. Overall, it’s less about whether the story is true and more about creating a shared tradition that makes the place feel haunted and memorable.