Description: Camp Arawak once boasted six bunkhouses, a pier, main hall and assorted structures on twenty acres overlooking the lake. The shore is an idyllic reminder of its tranquil past, but, today, much of the campgrounds have been overtaken by brush and most of the buildings have vanished to be consumed by weather and overcome by the thick growth. A solitary basketball court which once was in a clearing has become inaccessible and animals have made their homes in once were bunkhouses built for thirty kids. Trails and paths barely remain leading to once was the main campground.

Ghostly Manifestations: The ghosts reportedly seen and felt at Camp Arawak are allegedly the remains of several murders that occurred there in 1983. Police and news reports of the area describe a young girl who mercilessly murdered just over a dozen of her tormenters in incidents eerily reminiscent of Columbine High school fifteen years later.

In the weeks following the murders, police and investigators going through the camp to develop their case not only collected evidence but documented paranormal incidents. Locals who know the stories are convinced that the spirits are not aware that they have died because of the brutal way in which they were violently ejected into the next world. One officer thought he heard screaming from the direction of the boy’s restroom in a bunkhouse and entered gun drawn unable to find the person doing the screaming. Others officers hearing the screams have investigated as well but have yet to find the person who made the sounds. Some individuals have reported that the tormented cries ring through the old campsite almost encouraging witnesses to follow. A fisherman cutting through the old campground for his campsite claims he followed the voice leading him to the lake, but after just a few minutes, he had an inexplicable panic attack and couldn’t go any further.

An amazing number of apparitions occur at night when the mist forms on the lake. Nearby residences and fisherman have seen a young man floating in a canoe on the lake. Many don’t pay any attention to him. Others who have seen him describe the young man in a frozen trance staring ahead as his canoe drifts against the current and slowly vanishing in the fog.

During the police investigation, a forensic expert from Manhattan was coming back up the path to the archery field once existed. She reported seeing a figure stagger out of the brush and fall in full sight of her no less than thirty feet from where she was. She rushed to help him, but couldn’t find his body in the field much less then any other footsteps in the disturbed grass. As it turns out other witnesses have seen this figure often in this area as well as wandering the woods. No one has yet to make a clear glimpse of the figure except as a ambling, shuffling figure in gray sometimes lurking through the woods as if looking for someone. He darts unseen from tree to tree and frequently out of eyeshot. During a routine check of the area, two officers trailed the so-called prowler through the woods near the archery course thinking they had a vagrant looking to make trouble. They backed him behind a tree and kept eyes on it waiting for him to merge from either side of it as they closed in, but their quarry had vanished as they circled round looking for him.

The phantom voices of children playing just out of sight have haunted many potential buyers looking over the property. Near the back maintenance road off Sleepaway Drive, drivers often brake to avoid hitting children running across the road. A few have sworn that they had hit something that jumped into the car, but when they get out to look, nothing is ever there.

On the third anniversary of the murders in 1976, several teenagers from nearby Argyle came to camp out and look for the ghosts. They failed to hear the children’s voices, but they did make note on the eerie silence there at night. No was no sound of a cricket, bird or even a stray dog of which numerous are known to wander the grounds. They took photos of the shower stall where local rumor claim the bloodstains from one of the camp murders have refused to be washed away and posed for photos on the former archery course. Eventually, the haunting silence got the best of their imaginations and they fled. Others have described the numbing silence as if all the rest of the world has vanished and “you’re the only ones left.”

As late as 1990, the shower bloodstains are still there although much of the cabin has collapsed in around it from neglect and the elements. The skeptical claim from just looking at the so-called stains that they’re just rust spots, but when police officers first starting taking forensic evidence in 1983, they noted that some of the stains from a person killed in the shower just never rinsed away. The cabin next door is still nearly as intact as it was in 1983, but it is largely boarded up. The boards barring the entrance don’t seem to bother the frightening sprit that haunts it. A former camper nostalgically wandering the grounds one cloudy afternoon has described seeing a short dark-haired girl wander out and stand on its front landing. Reacting as someone possibly living in the abandoned structure, the figure has been described by those who have seen her as pensive and distant before realizing she is being watched. Once noticed, though, she has turned and faced her on-lookers, even one gentleman watching her from nearly thirty-five meters through binoculars, smiling with a grin reported as that of pure evil as if she herself caused the 1983 murders. Her unholy visage has been seen thirteen times since. A local Halloween newspaper article inaccurately identified her as Angela Baker, the girl who had masterminded and engineered the camp massacre, but this is in error since Baker is still very much alive and at the time serving time in a mental hospital.

It should be noted, however, that people who have often repeated the ghost stories out of former Camp Arawak have formulated some odd alternative scenarios to the murders. They believe this unidentified female figure was the actual mastermind and Angela was just a willing accomplice. According to this rumor, Angela and another girl committed all the deaths, but this is unlikely because Angela was by nature a loner and by herself for most of her stay and because there is no motive that fits this two killer scenario.

A similar theory was built to place the blame on the shadowy figure seen lurking through the woods. In trying to identify and link the murder victims to the ghosts, one story recently proposed was that this specter is the ghost of the real killer and that he was shot and killed by the police investigating the murders. The few local Argyle officers that are still on the police force since 1983 insist that this version is complete hogwash. The official version is that Angela Baker by herself committed the murders because she was mentally maladjusted and that the exposure to the forced social activity and torture from her so-called peers caused her to strike back. Nevertheless, individuals fascinated by the Arawak murders still try to formulate scenarios based on the haunting patterns.

Activity at the camp increased after 1987 when Baker was released from the mental hospital in Albany. Since that date, fisherman and skiers have been distressed by the headless figure of someone waving people in from shore or standing on a phantom dock that no longer exists. He always appears when storm clouds roll in and even sometimes wandering aimlessly up the breakwater as if searching for something. His unearthly presence has been seen infrequently transversing the length of the old camp up and down the shoreline of the lake.

As yet, no professional investigations have been made, but every Halloween, the local Argyle newspaper reprints the same article word for word. Looking for new ghost stories, two reporters, former counselor Ronnie Angelo, Angela’s cousin Ricky Thomas, now a struggling musician, and a so-called local psychic obtained permission from the police in 1998 to visit the overgrown camp and camp there for the night to document the ghosts. They set up their location in the former main hall of the camp which neglected by time and weather had now became little more than a two-story barn with intact candy machines, abandoned furniture and message boards left untouched since 1983. His first time back to the camp since the incidents that occurred there, Johnson shared many of his experiences and dated memories with Lutz as they walked the length of the former camp. The psychic didn’t offer any thing new but to repeat things that had already been made known, but Ricky did make the best approximations yet as to who was haunting the camp based on what he recalled. He had known one young man stung to death by hornets in the restroom and another who had drowned in the lake. As the night wore on, things became unproductive. The ghosts refused to appear or perform and the evening was a bust. Leaving his past and connections to the camp behind, Ricky was reunited with Ron and they separated again promising to keep in touch.

A week and a half later, Ricky and Ron got together for lunch. The young man asked his former counselor if he recalled the name of the young man who was his best friend back in 1983 because he was blacking out on it. The young man was Paul Romero. Ricky then confessed that after visiting the camp that he’d had a dream of Paul asking him to bring Angela back to the camp so he could forgive her.

Today the land is overgrown and inaccessible, but sometimes drivers heading up the road can still hear the crack of a phantom bat or the happy sounds of phantom children from the desolate campgrounds.

History: Camp Arawak was once the Rose Farm from 1895 to 1927. Related distantly to the Rose Family, Mel Hiltzik bought the land and used his life savings to create Camp Arawak for children based on images from his own summer camp memories.

The story of the 1983 murder toll actually begins in 1976 when Peter Baker survived a boating accident that killed his father and sister. His Aunt Martha Thomas, a practicing physician, had adopted him afterward to raise him. Possibly disturbed since the death of her husband, she was probably pushed over the edge by the death of her brother and by the fact that she could not conceive another child for the daughter she wanted. She used Peter’s shock from the accident to give him his sister’s identity and make him over in her likeness and raise him as the daughter she wanted. She even went as far as to keep the truth from her son, Richard (aka Ricky). She was clearly forcing her subdued insanity upon the boy.

Introverted and emotionally stunted, Peter was conditioned and raised as his sister, Angela Baker, and subsequently accepted it unconsciously due to his state of mind after the boating accident. Long since kept secluded from social relationships, he was provoked by his first exposure to the camp setting, mental abuse from his/her female bunk mates, developing sexual urges and unconscious conditioning to conceal his/her identity. Responsible for twelve known deaths, including that of Mel Hiltzik, Peter/Angela was institutionalized at the Lake County Regional Hospital in 1987 and later moved to the Monroe Community Mental Health Facility near Rochester in 1990 but released after five years of medication and therapy under a new identity. Held guilty of the murders and by children’s welfare agencies, his aunt was committed to Bellevue Hospital in New York City where she still presides to this day. In 2012, however, Peter/Angela willingly had himself/herself recommitted after problems with dealing with society. Rumors are he/she was connected to a new string of murders, but this is unconfirmed.

Meanwhile, the camp sits untouched and unable to be sold. Although it might never be used again as a camp, long-term city plans are to sub-divide the land into a housing development, but plans are on hold until surveyors and engineers can decide on how the land will look in the far future.

Identity of Ghosts: Ronnie Angelo, who was head counselor of the camp during the murders, still lives nearby and periodically passes the camp in his jogging exercises. Sometimes giving tours to anyone curious to visit the property, he is often asked to show the land to prospective buyers. He has seen many of the phenomenon first hand. In addition he knew many of the murdered victims: Kenneth Borden (who drowned in the lake), William Myers (stung to death by hornets), Meg Voorhees (knifed in the shower), Judy Krueger (impaled on a hair curler), Mel Hiltzik (shot with an arrow to the neck), Paul Romero (decapitation) and several children who were axed and dismembered in their sleeping bags.

“Of course,” Today, Ronnie is co-owner of Camp Manabe near Addiston, New York. He adds. “That doesn’t include the peaceful spirits of former campers who return just to remember the camp for what it was. I still remember what the camp was once like, but you can’t get me up there after dark.”

Angela’s cousin, Ricky Thomas, has linked many of the names to the reputed ghosts based on his memories. He says the figure lurking through the woods has to be Mel Hiltzik, the camp owner still looking for Angela, because the man grabbed and attacked Ricky in the darkness back then while trying to stop the murders. The malevolent female force seen by several has to be either Meg Voorhees or Judy Kruger because they themselves instigated the emotional attacks on Angela although Ricky leans more to Judy than Meg.

“To this day, I still sometimes recall Judy as beautiful and fun…” Ricky reminisced in 1998. “But I never really knew her. She was actually arrogant, mean, heartless and constantly terrorizing Angela just because she was there. It was her fault more than Angela or my mother that Paul, Kenny, Billy and the other guys had to lose their lives and I think she knows it now wherever she is. The scary thing is… I don’t think she really cares.”

Comments: Based on the Sleepaway Camp Trilogy (1983/1987/1988/2008) with phenomenon and history based upon random cases.

"The Sleepaway Murders: The Shocking True Story of Peter Baker and Angela Thomas" by Geoffrey Hayes, M. C. Cooley and William Collins

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