This is one of those campfire stories that just exist.

One that seemed to have the darkness of forests and satana crackling campfires.

The characters and settings are different, but that wrongness in each retelling never changes.

Of course, it isn't my story.

I'm not involved in its roots or current cast, just a wretched retelling.

I bring it out after cold nights, s'mores, helping to infect some of the scouts with goose pumps.

Sometimes, I get a few adults too.

Sometimes, on the coldest nights, when I'm left with a dying flame,

I tell myself the story.

Feel those jitters too.

Route 27 cuts through the Daniel Boone National Forest, like a winding snake,

amidst tidal waves of ivy.

The green hills bobbing up and down and filling with mist before the orange mourn.

If you ever travel through it, you'll know what I mean when I say it's overgrown.

So overgrown, there's more green earth than blue sky.

So overgrown, that man's structures are covered in blankets of emerald ivy.

Even the ivy strangles ivy.

I've driven through Route 27 a few times, and on one occasion,

I saw an abandoned truck that looked like a chia pet.

The next bar I overheard someone say that they had to leave that truck out there overnight

for a part, and he wasn't sure how he'd take it back from the world's reclamation.

It wouldn't be incorrect to say the forest can hide just about anything.

...