The Tale(s) of Stumpy

Stumpy’s story has several variations, most of which revolve around his origin. The scary camp stories I know are not stories with deep plots or many characters. They have little or no dialogue. Instead, they are more descriptions of a scary image, something one might encounter in the dark woods. Medieval Europe had witches and goblins. Camp Aharah had Stumpy, the Ground Creature, and the Ratpike. 

Taken out of the woods, none of these characters make much sense. No one tells the story of Stumpy’s trip to the big city or even an excursion to Lake Michigan. He is scary because he could be lurking in the woods, fueled only by a burning desire for revenge or general bloodlust. He is out there carrying his axe in his one good hand, looking for things to chop, doing the few things that make sense to him: to cut, to break, to kill.

No matter how the story starts, it will always end the same way, missing campers or counselors; not a massacre (though I think the opportunity could be there in Stumpy’s story) but a couple of unsolved murders; that summer about which no one speaks when Timmy wandered into the woods and disappeared. The conclusion always has that same ending trope, the end with a question mark, hinting at a sequel or at least a remake. No one ever found Stumpy’s body. He could still be out there, campers, wandering, waiting, hunting. So that’s why you never go without a buddy.

Knowing the endpoint, here are some variations of Stumpy’s origin story. They are similar to stories I heard in cabins late at night. I admit I have taken some liberties; I never had a counselor quote Pride and Prejudice. I will not include the story I never heard but was hinted at by a 10-year-old who told me that Stumpy was missing both an arm and a leg, maliciously hopping through the woods. The fourth one I just made up for fun.

1.    The Drunken Logger

It is well-known that there was no love lost between the people of Walkerville and the employees of the logging camp on the big lake. The lumberjacks were on the rough side, coming from wild places around the country and looking for work. They were strong men who drank too much, swore too much, and stared just a little too longingly at the local young women. 

One evening, in the late fall, just before the end of the logging season, a young lumberjack sat by himself in the Pump Room, the local tavern, at closing. Having had a few too many, he began to hit on the waitress, who happened to be the daughter of the bartender. The bartender warned him several times to back off and finally threw him out of the bar with the help of a few others, declaring the place closed and locking the door. The young man was drunk and angry. He grabbed the axe he had left outside, walked up to the front door, and began swinging, chopping away at the barrier. The noise attracted other locals who tried to subdue him. The young man began wildly swinging his axe, aiming at no one and everyone. In the scuffle, his axe bit into the leg of one of those locals. 

 

 Wounding one of their own incensed the mob, who tackled the man, tied him up, and carried him off deep into the woods. They beat him with the blunt side of the axe, but the wounded man's brother turned the axe over and struck his arm with the blade, a cut deep into the bone. In fear of the consequences, the group ran away, leaving the young man to die. 

 

 

The next morning, the loggers left the camp, done for another season. Few noticed that the young man was gone, assuming that he either left town the night before or spent a fortunate evening with a Walkervillean. The town’s people were silent about the events.

But, the young man survived, fueled by rage and a stubborn will. Working through the pain, he managed to get to the knife in his boot and cut away the ropes. But that arm…the gash was deep and needed to be tied off. He knew, left alone, it would eventually kill him, so using his sharp knife, he finished the injury that the people of Walkerville had given him, leaving his severed arm there in the woods.

From then on, Stumpy, as the locals would call him, became a hunter, a one-armed demon lurking in the forest. Over the next year, young men going on hunting or fishing excursions by the big lake began disappearing. It was wartime, and some thought they were sneaking off to enlist, exchanging farm life for the adventure of battle.

Others suspected something more sinister, a rumor that was confirmed years later when a search party combed the forest for two counselors who had disappeared. In a grove deep in the woods, they found the heads and severed arms of their colleagues, neatly arranged with the skulls and arm bones of the young Walkervilleans. But that was years ago…

2.    The Spiteful Lumberjacks

Here, the man who would be Stumpy is a young buck from the north woods, a hard worker and talented woodsman. His prized possession was his shiny, double-bladed, steel axe, a gift from his father that he kept sharp and untarnished, wrapping it in a lamb’s wool sheath each night. His hard work put the other loggers to shame. They were tired of the camp foreman calling them lazy and pushing them harder than they wished to go. They decided that they would all benefit if the young man should sustain an injury, nothing too serious, just something to sideline him for a few weeks.

The plan was they would break his arm in the sawmill. It was a simple plan, a few men to hold him down and one to snap his arm with a sharp kick. Sawmills are never a safe place for struggle, and in his panic to escape, the buzzing blade sliced off the young man's arm.

He almost bled out, but they knew enough first aid to get him to the camp doctor. Stumpy lay in the medical cabin for a week, fighting off a severe infection. In his fevered state, he cried for his axe. The medic thought it was only to connect to his father and laid the shiny tool at the foot of his bed. That night, a dull thud and a surpised cry awakened the loggers. Stumpy shoved his foot on the dead man’s chest, providing the leverage to pull the axe from his heart. In the moonlight, the shiny axe head was smeared with the blood of his first victim. Stumpy began to swing, a whirling dance of pain and death, his axe connecting with arms and legs, the solid, wooden handle a tool to stun and subdue, the axe head for the finishing blow. 

When rosy-fingered dawn appeared, the smell of flapjacks from the mess tent wafted for no one but a few support staff and the camp foreman. He entered the aftermath of the midnight violence, the torso and head of each man lay on his bed. But the appendages had been arranged on the floor, arms and legs spelling out the message, “BEWARE OF STUMPY.”

That was the final year of logging on Lake Pebwama, and although this happened many years ago, some say that on moonlit nights you can still hear the chopping of an axe deep in the woods, a rhythmic reminder to all that we should beware of Stumpy.

3.    The Jealous Manager

There was only one woman that summer at the Lake Pebwama logging camp, Sue Crenshaw. She was the wife of Pete Crenshaw, the camp manager, sitting in the separate cabin reserved for her husband, bored out of her mind. Sue was too young to be a seasonal maternal substitute to the young loggers, but a little too old to be a love interest for most. They looked longingly at the young women in town who soundly rejected those smelly men living in the woods. Not to mention that her husband Pete was a jealous man who correctly assumed that his workers, mostly in their twenties, were nothing but animals with blazing hormones. His cabin and his wife were off-limits.

But there was a new logger on the team, a shy eighteen-year-old. Danny was quiet and kind. He spoke respectfully; “Yes, sir, Mr. Crenshaw.” He did his work well; saved his money; stayed in the camp when the others spent their pay on nights out in town. Pete thought he could make something of this young man. In a couple of seasons, he might be his assistant.

Sometimes, when the others had gone out, Pete did something he had never done before. He invited Danny into his home. The boy turned red and stared at his feet when he was introduced to Sue. She took his hand and smiled kindly until he met her gaze and smiled back, not smiles of attraction but of friendship. That was what she longed for out here in the woods, not a tryst, no illicit affairs, just a friend.

As the summer progressed, she connected with the boy in ways she never could with her husband. Danny liked to read, so they read together, taking turns reading chapters of an old copy of Pride and Prejudice to one another. And then, one night, Pete was walking back after an evening with the boys, an evening of several rounds purchased in his honor, when he mistook the words of Mr. Darcy for Danny’s own. “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”  He rushed in and, in a drunken trance of jealousy, grabbed the young man and struck his head on the stone fireplace.

As the story goes, Pete carried Danny deep into the woods where he planned to dismember and dispose of the body. But when the axe blade struck the arm of the unconscious man, Danny’s scream of pain, rage, and betrayal echoed across the lake. Pete ran in fear, taking Sue out of the camp and disappearing that night. No one knows how Danny survived. All we know is that Stumpy is still out there, walking the woods, waiting to pass his pain through the blade of the very axe that took his arm. 

4.    The Haunted Soldier

Danny “Stumpy” Sathers lost his left arm somewhere in the forests of Argonne, a victim of a close call with German artillery. He had signed up as a soldier not out of a sense of patriotic duty but as an antidote to the boredom of his privileged life in Chicago. There was nothing wrong with a Hyde Park garden party or a sailing race on Lake Michigan, except that there was always another garden party or a sailing race. There was always some niece of Wrigley or Field present, a connection his parents were trying to force.

When he returned from the war, it seemed he had lost the ability to smile along with the arm. He sat through the garden parties, never acknowledged the nieces, just sipped at a class of whiskey through every event. At night, the dreams would come. More than once, his mother had to shake him awake when he began to cry out in fear and anger, “Give me back my arm!” He told them he dreamt of a Hun soldier walking away with his arm as a prize. “My arm! Give it back! Give me back my arm!” The soldier held up the arm in a mock salute and, with a grin, walked away.

Danny’s father decided that the boy needed a change of pace, fresh air, and hard labor. He signed him up to work at one of the logging camps his company ran in the summers. “A few weeks and you will be back,” he said as he put him on the boat to Grand Haven. 

But the loggers didn’t have much use for a one-armed lumberjack. They were the first to give him that cruel nickname, Stumpy. At night, when he would cry out, “Give me back my arm!” they would pelt him with boots until he woke up. As the summer progressed, his right arm grew stronger. He learned to swing swiftly and accurately with one hand. He began to gain acceptance, a respected member of the camp. 

The dreams still came, the sneering Hun waving at him with his own arm. Yet, he was getting closer to that damned German, reaching out with his right hand. Finally, one night in his dreams, he reached the soldier and punched him in the face. The soldier fell, still sneering, his eyes staring at him. He punched him again and again, his right fist covered with blood. And still, the soldier held Stumpy’s left arm and still the soldier smiled. “Give me back my arm!” he shouted only to awaken standing over one of his bunkmates, lifeless, his face bloody and broken.

The other loggers began to stir at his shout. Stumpy grabbed his axe and ran, deep, deep into the forest. The search for Stumpy ended abruptly a week later when two local deputies were found missing their heads. They never saw him again, but if you listen carefully late at night, you can hear him crying out, a lost soldier, a broken man, “Give me back my arm!”