the girls, ghostwritten

In 1991, five girls attending Hope’s Haven Bible Camp in the Wiconsin Northwoods went on a day hike in the deep wilderness. They were never found again. These pages were discovered at the site years after the events at Haven. What they reveal is deeply unsettling, and yet— no one knows who wrote them or why they were left behind. The case, which remains one of the most infamous in the state’s history, has been retold endlessly in media, but the truth, it seems, was lost with the girls.

What follows are fragments of diaries, notes, photographs and drawings—scattered pieces of a puzzle that has captivated the public for nearly forty years. No one knows who wrote these or why they were left behind. Some believe these are the last words of those who vanished in the woods. Others think they belong to someone else—someone who might still be hiding in plain sight. The fact remains, however, that these records tell a story no one wanted to hear, a story that refused to be forgotten.

Remember that this is not a simple recollection. These diaries have been edited, redacted, and pieced together from the fragments left behind. The author’s true identity remains a mystery, but one thing is certain: whoever left these behind wanted their side of the story told. What you read here may be a clue- only time will tell. 

You need to know…

I wasn’t myself, under the spell of whatever lurked in the bushes. What I can remember of those months is hazy, but I do know one thing: something darker took hold of me in the wilderness. And sometimes, on these frigid nights, it comes back to me like a fever dream.

“The Girls”. I can just see the headline plastered on shiny streetside magazines, cloying for a cash grab. Perfect girlish cheeks gleaming in the innocence of youth… gone too soon. But something in those fragmented vignettes of pearly white smiles and homecoming queen hospitality told me I was…less than. Sophie, blond hair curled in hairspray-caked ringlets. Breanna in all her bronzed skin glory, trail of glass bottle florals so sickly-sweet, it rang of decay and molted flesh. Gabbie, attention-greedy glare hidden behind lacquered lashes and the latest fashion trend. And Riley. Riley Carter, the picture-perfect, all-American teenager. That glossy, presidential smile and cheerleader charm fooled all of you. She was a queen bee, alright, but she stung. Vicious and cruel, prowling for her next shiny new toy to break and discard. Riley- she was everything I wasn’t. But somehow, she looked at me differently. A look that ran through my insides and dug up the darkness. Like she could really see me, the lonely girl by the lake, drowning in my sketchbook. While other seniors my age spent weekends at the mall, or in a drunken haze wasting themselves away at sweaty beach parties, I sat like the ideal academic in my room, securing myself a scholarship for medical school at Columbia. I was the perfect daughter: dutiful, god-fearing… did what I was told. If only they knew. 

Hope’s Haven Bible Camp, 1991. That splintered wooden sign advertised a sweet July escape, blistered skin days and balmy moonlit nights spent with blood oath friendships under the canopy of whispering pines. But those painted letters faded with the weight of a lie. The four welcomed me that first day on the camp bus, smiles as fake as their hard candy nails. A textbook loser like me hadn’t received attention like that and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I craved validation so badly. After that drive over, I was a conjoined arm in their little clique, ear-witness to star-veiled crush confessions and every piece of midnight cabin gossip. Their effortless magnetism took me hostage with each inside joke, each whispered giggle as we snuck out to the beach for forbidden trysts with beer-breathed boys. Two weeks passed me by in a cicada-sung dream. I was even invited to their not-so-secret, exclusive bonfire parties; such that I bore witness to a fortnight of the perfect teenage reverie: pulling all-nighters in a canopy of smoke and the type of desired status you only heard through word of mouth.

But in the haze of that flickering flame the darkest parts of myself came to fruition. Because under the milky moonlight, like a dream so ethereal, so heady… there she was. Soft, luminous skin and a laugh that made angels weep. A playful grin so inviting… forgive me, I’m getting ahead of myself. Riley was a sin by design. Sometimes, her laughter suffocated the ache in my heart so painfully, I could see my sacrilege carved into my skin in the shape of her. I know she felt it too. Words unspoken, a tenderness saved for each other and a string between us pierced through our hearts that we’d been told to sever since childhood. Riley was everything, but she was untouchable, and wanting was the first step toward falling. She moved like she belonged there, with the stars and the endless sky. But I didn’t belong. Not with her, not with any of them. 

do you see it too?

I don’t know why I led them to their deaths that day. I don’t know what led them to their deaths that day. Was it me? Something worse? 

The camp scheduled forest hikes each week. I was paired with the girls, as usual. We set off with only bagged lunches, maps, and my switchblade, the camp leaders’ stone cold droning of rules still ringing fresh in our minds: “follow the path, watch for poison ivy”... 

“be back by sundown”. 

I took the lead (as the Ivy admit, they tended to think I knew everything), and they followed absentmindedly, Breanna braiding Sophie’s hair, spitting exasperated expletives at the pulsing sun that charred her skin, swatting at mosquitoes that feasted on tender flesh. Gabbie humming under her breath, picking wildflowers here and there, stuffing them in her pocket to make a flower crown later. Meanwhile, Riley stayed by my side, rambling on about nothing and everything, our footsteps falling together in silent tandem. For a moment, I thought about how perfect it all seemed—like nothing could touch us here, like we could walk forever without ever reaching the end. Like we could say what we wanted to and not have to confess on Sunday. When I looked up, I saw it again. The deer, bigger now. Just as I caught its vacant eyes, it pranced into the trees, gone as if it was never there. Riley caught my daze, attentive as she was. “What? What’s wrong?” she urged, following my lingering gaze. “Nothing, just a deer” I dismiss, pursuing the hoofprints’ trail. “Follow me, let’s go this way”. 

It was like lamb to the slaughter, how that animal compelled me to follow it blindly, deeper into the thick expanse of green. I don’t know how much time passed… but it was almost like I opened my eyes and the trail was narrower, trees darker, cheekbones silhouetted in the shadow of dusk. I frantically ruffled through my map, trying to make sense of where we were. We found ourselves at a stream, enveloped in an empty chorus of chirps and howls. As the heat of the sun began to cool against our backs and the forest murmured into slumber, the chilling dread of reality settled into our bones. By then, it was too late… we were truly lost. Tensions reached a breaking point and hope flickered out quick as the single flashlight we had brought, directing our fear at each other in accusatory spats. The five of us fell asleep on the rugged dirt, exhausted and desolate, Riley’s arm splayed across my torso in search of some warmth. 

I was awoken that night by a sound so beautifully haunting, my fear-chipped heart seemed to crack into pieces. A wailing cry too wild to be human. The sound lingered in the stillness of the trees, and when I looked towards it, I was met with a ghostly pale pair of eyes and sprawling, twisted antlers glinting from across the river. A grotesque display of blood and bone that was gorgeous in a way that felt wrong. Like it was waiting for me to stumble, to fall, to confess. Its gaze said what the Church never had to: that sin always finds you. The wilderness isn’t vast enough to hide in. Before I could stop it, the scream that tore through my throat sent it running into the shadowed green. “Hey,” Riley woke, her breath soft against my ear. ‘It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.’ Her jacket brushed my arm, and when I looked up at her, her face was so unguarded that I almost believed her.

once, I knelt here.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into a month. Eventually, I lost track of time, days melting together in a desperate mirage. Search parties came and went, I would find out, never to discover us. There was only so much we could do. Naturally, as the aspiring doctor, and the least squeamish, I became the main provider, hunting down anything I could find. Small game, the rare deer… they kept us going but never filled the void. Memories of the juicy bites of my mother’s cooking made my stomach roil in yearning. Fall’s frosted breath began to prickle our skin, and I became impatient. 

By the winter, we had withered to vacant carcasses, doing what we could to get by. One by one the forest took them, each time more brutal than the next. The small stream we discovered in a clearing, a sight that once had us on our knees in praise of salvation, was the match that lit the flame. A couple sips of poorly filtered water and Gabbie fell ill, lips pale and marked with the sheen of cold sweat. A couple days later, we woke to a corpse. She was the first to go. I was tasked with the disposal of her body, and I hid among the trees, letting the fire consume her. 

The day our misguided hope got us to cross a couple of wobbly logs dropped over a ravine to get past the wreck we were trapped behind: a crack of sodden wood and Breanna slipped, laying motionless a hundred feet below. We lost ourselves then, and the overwhelm of grief and exhaustion manifested in the hollowing of our cheeks as we were reduced to an emaciation of what once was. Every night, the wailing returned, only louder, and the creature seemed to take on a more depraved form each visit, warping into nightmarish visions I could barely distinguish from reality. Riley, without fail, stayed with me as I cried myself to sleep. 

And so three of us remained. Sophie prayed louder now, the words tumbling from her lips in a desperate hymn. But it wasn’t about salvation anymore. She was looking for someone to blame, finding the scapegoat. “Why did God let this happen to us?” she cried by the ravine one night after I turned up empty handed from a hunting trip, wild eyes landing on mine. “It’s your fault” she whispered, barely audible. “You led us here”. Her eyes flicked between Riley and me, breathless. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on here. Both of you—playing games with something sacred. I see it.” Her voice was rising now, panicked and trembling. “You think you won’t be punished? Look at us! Look where we are!” Riley stood unflinching, a shameful notch between her brows as her eyes bore into the side of my face. When I met her gaze, my breath caught in my throat. For a moment, I swear I saw them- antlers, large and jagged, twisting from the sides of her head. 

I don’t know what happened after that. One moment, Sophie was standing there, screaming with her arms stretched to the sky, and in a heartbeat my hands were on her waist, sending her stumbling backwards. I watched, frozen, as she hit the bottom with a sickening sound, wine-red pooling in the pure pale snow. As I walked back to our camp, I didn’t look behind me. Couldn’t. 

Riley wouldn’t look at me. The silence between us hung thick in the frigid air. That night, as the fire crackled softly, she had her knees drawn up to her chest, staring vacantly into the embers. She was crying, I realized, and she broke my heart all over again. I hadn’t meant to hurt her. I never meant to hurt her. I moved toward her, and without thinking, reached for her face, cupping it in my hands like it was something fragile, something just ours. I leaned in, my lips brushing hers, trembling with the weight of everything unspoken. Her eyes snapped up to mine, pulling back as her lip curled into something like disgust, and right then, everything between us shattered. She shoved me away roughly, the force of it leaving me breathless.

“What the hell are you doing?” she spat. “You can’t do that. Not here. Not after everything. I’m not some... I’m not…” She faltered, stepping back further with a wounded shake of her head. “You’re sick. You don’t get to do that to me.” 

I could hear it in the cracked resignation in her voice, the dark cavities around her eyes, the heavy hang of her head. She was a shell of Riley now, ashamed of who she was, who she had become. She didn’t believe any more- God couldn’t save us. She slumped against a chopped tree trunk, folded into herself like she wanted to sink into the bark’s crevices, and dropped her head into her hands through choked sobs. I blinked and a tear ran warm against my December-flushed cheek. When I looked back up at her- she wasn’t there at all. Rather, a small fawn lay curled there in the snow, its spindly legs awkwardly tucked into itself, delicate and vulnerable, chest rising and falling in shallow succession. Like it didn’t belong here. Its wide, glassy eyes met mine in unyielded silence, searching for something lost. I realized then: I loved her too much to let her go. If she couldn’t love me, she could at least be a part of me. 

And so I didn’t think when my fingers wrapped around the switchblade in my pocket and brought it flush against the creature’s throat, cold steel glinting under the moonlight. I didn’t ask why when I deftly sliced through skin, letting the warmth of blood trickle down my hands and onto the fresh fallen snow like teardrops. I didn’t stop when I carved its stomach open, as shaky hands slick and sticky in crimson tore raw flesh from bone, teeth ripping apart veins, tendons, heart. And for the first time in weeks, the hunger inside me was silenced. 

Yet, sometimes, even after all these years,

in the dead of night,

note 002:

Music/Audio: 

Archived Sermon: 

Nn by Other Nothing

Elk Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqYEN_NKJk8

Televangelism by Ethel Cain

Photos: 

All images sourced from Pinterest (original creators unknown)

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