Camp 48

Have any of you ever gone camping as a kid? I have, and I hated it. A lot. Judge me all you want, but the idea of sleeping out in the forest for a long period of time always sounded crazy to me. I don't know why, but that's just how I am I guess.

However, this changed later on in my life when I discovered urban exploring and the rather large community that surrounded it. I quickly grew interested and started making a living off of it with YouTube videos. The idea of exploring an area that was once rife with human activity always fascinated me for some reason, especially if the area was furnished and untouched since it was abandoned.

Unfortunately, doing so was rare because if an abandoned place like this is discovered by someone in the community, it usually isn't long before the area is looted by explorers. I guess the rarity of such an activity is kind of a good thing because if this was a common and easy thing to do, I think it would ruin the novelty of such an activity.

Even after what happened, I'm still big into the urban exploring scene. The occurrence that I'm alluding to here happened back in 2016 when someone on reddit told me about a nameless island off the cost of San Diego that he found on Google Maps.

He said that it's been untouched since 2008, and he asked me if I would like to explore it with him. Now, I knew the guy, and had talked to him on several occasions before, so, I accepted. He said that he would meet up with me at the beach in a few hours. I went to the gym, did my workout, and walked down to the beach and waited for him. He said that he had his own motorboat that we could use to get there. After 15 minutes at sea, we finally made it to the island. The island was uninhabited for the most part except for some structures in the heart of the island.

We walked around for a while. I noticed several strange and unnerving things already. For example: there were trees that were torn in half or blown apart, black spots in the ground, and even bones buried in the ground.

We finally made it to the small homestead. There were several small cabins and one large warehouse in the middle. We checked out some of the cabins first. They were furnished, with beds, tables, and even kitchen appliances. The only problem was that dust covered everything.

One cabin was strange, however. There were clothes all over the place, rotten already made food on the table, and the sink was full of dirty water. The clothes looked like they belonged to a little girl, and there was a phone on the counter.

We then checked out the rusted warehouse. There was a boiler room, living quarters etc. That's when we came across a large red door. It was locked. After about 10 minutes, we finally managed to get the thing open.

I was in awe when we walked in. Hundreds of different guns and weapons lined the walls, including a Sage SL-6, an FN Minimi, an M16, grenades, C4, and even a Stinger launcher. We entered another room. This one was a control room of sorts. In the front side of the room, there were 3 desks with multiple monitors set up, on the left there was a security hub, and on the right, there were several shelves of hundreds of DVD cases.

Obviously, none of the tech worked because the place lacked power, but it was still really intriguing nonetheless. I took one of the cases off of the shelf. My friend protested and said that I shouldn't do that (Spoiler alert: he was right, but at the time I didn't realize that), but I said that this place was abandoned for nearly a decade and because of that, I didn't think anyone would could give less of a shit about what we were doing. These people were organized, as all the DVDs were sorted out by date from 1-17-2000 - 12-14-2008.

After about a half-hour of exploring some more, we finally went back home. I decided that I wanted to see what was on the DVD, so I put it in my computer and viewed the files. There was one .mp4 file called "Episode #291". I checked the properties and it said that it was created on April 1st of 2006.

I loaded the video up.

It started with an intro:

"Camp 48 Productions presents.....

An all-new episode of Campers n' Scampers!"

Happy music played in the background. I was really interested at this point.

It was a POV type of video. It started with a clear view of 3 men standing In front of the warehouse. One was tall and muscular, with a blue T-shirt, black pants, and a distinct anarchy symbol tattoo on his right shoulder. The one next to him was about 5 ft tall with a polo-shirt, and the other was a lean-bulk man in a chef outfit.

"Welcome ladies and gentlemen! My name is Christian, that's Jake "Dwarf" Cobin, and Chef Luke! Today, we have a fun activity for you! There were 5 hidden items spread out across the island! One is a bag with 1.5 million in it, 1 is a PlayStation 3, One is an Xbox 360, one is a gaming laptop, and the other is a solid golden watch! if one single person can find all 5 prizes in one setting, you will win a grand prize of 10 million dollars! If you do not find anything within the time limit, you will lose and you'll be disqualified!"

The POV then switched to Christians point of view, and showed the contestants. There were, if I remember correctly, 5 children, 6 teenagers, and 12 adults, for a total of 23 campers.

"Now! You will all be split into groups of two! Good luck, everyone!"

The campers were split into groups and finally set out on their quest. Christian began to laugh silently and muttered:

"Oh my god this is gonna be fuckin' golden.."

He then motioned for Jake and Luke to come with him. He went into the computer room. The monitors were on, with CCTV footage of various locations, such as a cave, two trees, and a cabin. He told Luke and Jake to "ready up". He then grabbed some popcorn and sat down at the desk.

The view then switched to Luke's point of view. He unlocked the big red door, walking into the armory. He grabbed an M60 machine gun and Jake grabbed some C4 charges with a bayonet M16. They then ventured out into the island. The view then switched to the CCTV footage of the two trees. There was a briefcase between them. Keep in mind that the camera had audio and colored video.

A little girl, maybe 7 or 8 years of age, along with a young adult in his early 20s walked over to the trees. The little girl pointed at the case and the man walked over to it. It then switched to Christians POV. As the man made his way to the case, Christian grabbed a remote. He pushed the big red button, and BAM!

The case exploded, obliterating the man and the girl. He laughed his ass off as he grabbed some more popcorn.

"Nah man this has to be fake" my friend said. I didn't respond. I didn't know what to say. If this was real, it was fucked up beyond belief.

Then I was then meat with an image of a cave. I noticed that there was a PlayStation 3, complete with 2 controllers and cords as well. Two young men walked over to it, picked it up. Suddenly, a large boulder fell on the man, crushing him instantly. The other man screamed and ran out of the cave.

It then switched to drone footage of the man running. He then came across a cabin with a teenage girl and a young boy in front of it. They entered the cabin. The man entered after them. The drone was looking into the window. The man told the two other campers to not touch the laptop, but before he could get anything out, a sharp spike erupted through the floor, crippling the two kids. The spikes then lowered slowly.

The man helped the two kids out of the cabin and back to the homestead. While they were on their way, they came across 3 other campers; 2 children and an older woman. They told them what happened, and made their way back to the homestead. They ran towards the warehouse's side door. It then switched to Luke's point of view. Little did the campers knew, Luke was waiting on the other side with a loaded M60. As he aimed his gun at the door, laughing evilly as he did. They opened the door. They froze in place.

The teen girl was about to say something but then Luke opened fire on them. After 10 seconds of loud gunfire, he finally stopped. He turned around and walked away. He muttered:

"Ha. Fuckin' retards..."

"We're down 7 campers!" Christian said.

"Awesome! What about the others?" Luke asked.

"We're getting to them!" Jake said.

Jake then grabbed what looked like a DefTec grenade launcher and 3 incendiary grenades and walked out of the warehouse. He came across 4 other campers.

"Hey!!! You aren't playing by the rules, guys! Groups of 2, not 4!" With that, he pulled the pin on one of the incendiary grenades and threw it. He watched as the campers were roasted alive.

"12 more.." he said under his breath.

He walked for a little while before coming across 3 other campers. They were inside another cabin with a propane tank next to it. He remarked about how stupid the campers were, aimed his grenade launcher at the propane tank, and fire. He laughed as a huge explosion erupted from the impact of the grenade to the tank.

It then switched to Luke point of view. This time, he was carrying a M202 FLASH. He came across a group of 6 campers atop a cliff.

"You're not playing the game very fairly..." he said, while aiming the weapon at the base of the cliff. He fired the weapon. Almost the entire fucking cliff caved in, bringing the six campers down with it.

He put the launcher down and whipped out two desert eagle handguns and searched for the other campers. After 10 minutes, he finally found them. Instead of simply killing them, he forced them to kill each other, and then forced the remaining camper to end his own life.

After this, the three hosts got together to search for the remaining two campers. After a few minutes, they finally found them, huddled up in a closet in a cabin. One was a 2 year old girl and the other was a 17 year old boy.

The hosts brought them back to one of the cabins by the warehouse and tied them up. Christian then said:

"Alright, buddy boy! You have two choices:

Choice one! You slowly kill the girl and we let you go free as the last survivor with the 10 million.... or... we falsely accuse you of being a pedophile, ruin your life and reputation, and set both of you free with no physical pain!"

"C'mon bro! Why do you have to do this?!" the man pleaded.

"Shut the fuck up!" Luke yelled.

"Make a choice, man! you have 60 seconds to do so.." Christian said.

"5..... 4.... 3..... 2...." - "fine! two!!! I pick two!!!" the man yelled through tears.

"Good! Alright!!" Christian yelled while clapping his hands. Christian then made a very in-detail social media post about how the camper was a child-rapist, and even posted pictures of the mutilated children that he and his cronies killed, and made it come from the campers account.

"Alright... Alright!!! Now will you let us go?!" the man asked.

"Hmmmmmmm….. nah. Nope. Sorry. Today is April Fools Day! Of course not!" Christian said happily.

"What?! But you said-" "No buts! You made your choice by coming here, you doofus! You should've expected this shit!" Luke said.

He then crudely amputated the two campers before killing them.

"Alright... let's get this video edited up and uploaded..." Jake said.

I was sick. I didn't know what to say. What made it even worse is how the hosts acted after. They treated it like it was just another day at the office despite the fact that they just brutally murdered 23 innocent people.

We reported this to law enforcement. The island was investigated, but no leads were found as to who the men were. The FBI launched an investigation that lasted nearly a year but nothing was found. All of the videos, and other evidence are now in the possession of the police. Not a single stone on the island was left unturned, and despite the fact that the resources they used to run their 'show' was all there, there was absolutely zero evidence whatsoever that could have given us a lead as to who the men were and where they went aside from their appearances and voices that were present in the videos.

I don't know if the men who ran this were arrested earlier on and law enforcement decided to cover it all up for some reason, or if the men who ran it got bored and decided to simply abandon the operation all together. The investigators even scoured the dark web for answers, and other than some mentions of it on dark web video sharing forums, no actual Camp 48 website was found.

I still explore abandoned areas, but nowadays, I'm much more careful about what I bring back with me. I still think about this to this day sometimes, and I still hear the voices of those men in my nightmares sometimes at night.