At the time, Friday the 13th was a big deal. Jason Voorhees and Camp Crystal Lake had introduced an entire generation to an important life lesson: nothing good ever happens at a summer camp after dark.
One Saturday night in late June 1981, several friends and I were sitting around a fire, drinking a few beers and trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.
This was before cell phones, streaming services, and the internet. When you got bored back then, you actually had to invent your own bad decisions.
As usually happened during these gatherings, the conversation wandered through a variety of subjects until somebody brought up Friday the 13th and Jason.
That's when my friend Mark made what would turn out to be a critically important contribution to the evening.
Mark had once worked at Camp Cathedral on Long Pond in Freetown, Massachusetts.
Every year, he explained, the counselors spent a week at the camp before the kids arrived, learning the grounds and getting ready for the summer.
And, as luck would have it, this was that week.
Then Mark added one more tiny piece of information.
He knew a back way into the camp.
It required about a mile-long walk through the woods.
Five imaginary light bulbs immediately appeared over five slightly beer-enhanced heads.
Wouldn't it be fun to scare the counselors?
This struck all of us as an absolutely brilliant idea.
Like clowns piling into a clown car, the five of us squeezed into Tom's subcompact Dodge Colt and headed down the highway toward the camp.
About twenty minutes later, we reached the back entrance Mark had described.
We piled out of the car, already giggling like schoolkids at the sheer brilliance of what we were about to do.
Fortified with liquid courage and absolutely no common sense, we started down the trail through the woods.
Fortunately, there was a bright moon overhead.
Unfortunatbely, there were five of us.
We stumbled and tripped our way through the forest, laughing and making enough noise to wake the dead. How we managed to reach the camp without anybody hearing us remains one of the great mysteries of the evening.
As we got closer, though, we finally became quiet.
Mostly.
There was still the occasional muffled snicker.
Then the woods opened up.
The night was deathly still. A layer of fog hung over Long Pond, and the surface of the lake was perfectly calm.
No wind.
No ripples.
Nothing.
Honestly, it was exactly the kind of night when Jason Voorhees should have come walking out of the woods.
Ahead of us stood a cabin, brightly lit from inside.
We crept toward it with the stealth and precision of five highly trained ninjas.
Or at least that's how I remember it.
We pressed ourselves against an outside wall near an open window. Laughter and music drifted out into the night.
Judging by the voices, there must have been twenty or so counselors inside having a good time.
We could barely contain ourselves.
With whispers and hand signals, we devised an extraordinarily sophisticated tactical plan.
On the count of three, we would scream like banshees and pound as hard as we could on the side of the cabin.
That was the entire plan.
I silently mouthed the count.
One...
Everyone got ready.
Two...
Oh man, this is going to be good.
THREE!
All five of us erupted.
We screamed.
We yelled.
We pounded on the side of the cabin like lunatics.
And the reaction from inside was immediate.
SCREAMS!
Then came crashing tables.
Chairs toppled over.
Feet thundered across the wooden floor as twenty terrified counselors apparently attempted to locate every available exit at exactly the same time.
We completely lost it.
Several of us doubled over laughing.
One of the guys nearly pissed himself.
Inside the cabin, absolute chaos continued.
Outside the cabin, five idiots were congratulating themselves on what we considered one of the greatest covert operations ever conducted in southeastern Massachusetts.
Then we ran.
We disappeared back into the woods, still laughing as the screams and commotion faded behind us.
All five of us were talking at once.
Nobody could stop laughing.
The mission had been an overwhelming success.
As far as we know, nobody at the camp ever figured out exactly what happened that night.
For all I know, a few of those counselors are still sitting around a campfire somewhere telling the story.
"It was late June. The lake was covered in fog. We were all inside the cabin when suddenly... something came out of the woods."
And somewhere, shortly after that, Jason Voorhees probably got the blame.
We knew better.
It was just five young guys, a few beers, a Dodge Colt, and an absolutely terrible idea.
In other words, a pretty good Saturday night.
