Follow TV Tropes

This is based on opinion. Please don't list it on a work's trope example list.

Following

Nightmare Fuel / The Curse of Camp Cold Lake

Go To

  • Sarah nearly drowning by accident. She ends up in a version of the camp that is in winter, where everything is cold and covered in frost. A girl named Della offers her a robe and a place to rest, only to reveal that she is dead, and Sarah needs to stay with her so they can be buddies and cross to the Other Side.
  • Della is Not Good with Rejection. When Sarah freaks out about being dead and spending her afterlife with a creepy ghost girl, Della follows Sarah into the world of the living and starts actively trying to murder her. Sarah also can't tell anyone because no one would believe her. It gets worse when the Cruel Twist Ending reveals that Della did succeed in killing another camper the previous year: Briana.
  • In the climax, Della reveals that she tricked Sarah into running into the woods to get away from camp. Why? Because Della didn't drown; she was killed by a poisonous snake! And the woods are full of them. Briana shows up to save Sarah, only to reveal that she wanted to kill Sarah personally to ensure that she had a buddy. Sarah's frozen with fear, and the novel ends with Briana setting a snake on her.
  • The fact that the camp covered up two accidental deaths related to the woods and don't explain why. None of the counselors will tell Sarah about dead campers, and she doesn't find out until it's too late.
  • The cover, hands down. It's a skeleton of a teenage girl with unnaturally bright hair and deep, piercing, unblinking eyes staring down the viewer emerging from the lake. Made worse by the fact that this thing isn't even in the book, with the antagonist being a regular ghost girl. Unless, that actually is the corpse of Sarah after Briana killed her and ditched her body in the lake.

Top