When I was about seven years old, we took a family vacation to Montreal, Quebec. We stopped on the way in upstate New York. It was coming towards evening, and we were very near to a place that had been recommended to us called "Schroon Lake." We were not exactly sure how to get there so we stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant for directions. We tried to find this place for several hours. By this time it was very dark, and there was talk in the car of things in the woods like bears, wolves, etc. The general feeling, at least among the kids (we were about 7, 6 and 5) was VERY SCARED!

We finally did find the lake the next day, and it was perfectly nice, in the daytime. We went swimming and had a good time, but none of that was occuring to us that night. We began to question whether there really was such a place after all.

My father finally broke the tension by voicing his suspicions about the young man who had given us the directions,

"I think that kid was foolin' us... either that or that fool was kiddin' us!!!"