The KOA Campfire Stories are a series of written ghost stories, posted to the Kampgrounds of America website and collected there since 2003 onward. The written stories were also later recorded as .MP3 files that visitors to the website could download for free, narrated by a select variety of volunteers. The original stories included the titles "The Pit Toilet", "The Valley Witch", "Two Eyes", "Night of the Trees", "S'more Sasquatch", "Town of 12345" and "Wobblefink". As years went on, the list was added to with new stories; as of 2023, K.O.A. had a list of "17 Kid-Friendly Spooky Campfire Stories"[1]
with each written story made available for free access, while the .MP3 audio recordings of the original 7 stories from 2003 remain posted for free download, as well.
- A couple of the short stories were renamed in 2022:
- "Town of 12345" is now titled "A Town Named 12345".
- "Wobblefink" is now titled "The Legend of the Great Texas Wobblefink".
- "The Pit Toilet" is now titled "Creature of the Pit Toilet".
These collected stories provide examples of:
- Abandoned Camp Ruins: Section E in "Night of the Trees".
- Dystopia: The town of 12345 (yes, that's the town's official name) must keep its population at a stable number all the time, even if it means killing off an excess resident.
- Bears Are Bad News: The short story "Bear Hunting" features a Slavic man named Yuri being decapitated by a giant bear. This leads to a surprising amount of dark humour to follow.
- Disgusting Public Toilet: Averted in "The Pit Toilet", in which the main character is actually relieved to just find the stupid toilet after all her time searching in the dark alone; the toilet is not described as disgusting or gross in any way whatsoever, even when perfect opportunities arise (such as a rescue crew searching the hole beneath the toilet for a little girl's missing body.
- Meaningful Name: A character from "Two Eyes" is named "Fester Skunkman", according to the story's narrator, both because he never takes a bath and because he is lazy.
- Hillbilly Horrors: "Two Eyes", which features a redneck in a rural town as the main character, with the local haunted house being the point of attraction in this old-timey rural town.
- Horrible Camping Trip: With a major campground organization having released these stories, this trope would be impossible to avoid, the two most prominent examples being:
- "Night of the Trees" — two campers, a romantic couple, are warned not to go into Section E after dark. They just wouldn't listen...
- "The Pit Toilet: A little girl is attacked by a creature and presumably killed while using an outhouse alone at night during a camping trip with her family.
- Losing Your Head: "Bear Hunting" features this when a decapitation occurs due to a bear attack.
- Noisy Nature: Most of these stories, at least all those set outdoors, serve as a strong example of things going bump in the night that live in nature.
- Parental Neglect: In "The Pit Toilet", the little girl's parents, asleep in their tent, allow the girl out alone in the wooded campground in the middle of the night to use an outhouse.
- Toilet Horror: "The Pit Toilet" story features a little girl who has to use the bathroom at night. She goes out in the dark alone to use an outhouse, where a monster grabs her buttocks and drags her down into the open hole. Search and rescue workers later discover a series of pathways that the monster might use to creep around the campground.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The town in the story "Town of 12345" must maintain its population of 12,345 people at all times for legal reasons. This leads to quite the shocking dystopian scenario.
- Twist Ending:
- Fester Skunkman shoots what he thinks are "two eyes" staring up at him in the dark, which leads to an inexplicable amount of pain. It is then revealed that Fester shot off his own two big toes.
- A man kills another man to keep the town's population at 12,345 people when the upcoming birth of twins is announced. It is then revealed that one of the babies was stillborn, so the killing was all for nothing.
- Urban Legends: Some of the newer of the short stories, including "Hook", "Fifty-Cent Piece" and "The Hairy Toe", are all based on old urban myths.
