#CountdowToHalloween2024 - Halloween Camp

As I mentioned in my last post, this is all about K9-One's Halloween Camp! 

So I am a "professional volunteer" on a search & rescue team.  We can and do get deployed all over Michigan, which means we work and train with a lot of other teams.  K9-One is one of them.  Their director loves Halloween and has been hosting Halloween Camp since 2002?  (a long time)  I joined my team in 2018 and 2020 is the first time I attended Camp.

In a nutshell, there's a theme for the weekend and we use what we've learned in SAR to solve the mystery.  This year was very loosely based on Clue, but instead of the usual suspects, they were horror characters - Elvira, the Mummy, Freddy, Jason, Michael & Pennywise. 

 Let me go on a small tangent here - I was astounded at how many people had no idea who these characters are!  They're only everywhere! 

But anyway. 

We were split up into 3 teams prior, so we could decide who was going to be team leader and treasurer.  We also had a list of random things to use for the team, and also individually.  There is "creature cash" in play, which we earn winning games or whenever Pat chooses to hand it out.  It's also hidden all over camp!  Whatever team has the most creature cash at the end of the weekend wins. 

First order of business was a team building art project.  

We had to build a haunted house representing our detective agency.

Mine was Pinkerton. 

Next was an obstacle course for the K9s.  In the past I've taken Chuck thru, since he is a champ at sit & stay, but he doesn't eat hot dogs and sure can't find a playing card in the grass with a tiny blood smear on it!   So we just watched. 

Little monsters were clawing the side of my car!!

Oh, it was just the grandkids before I left...

Chuck came home with a friend!  Since I got there Friday night, I had time to run "into town" Saturday morning and found this guy at Meijer's!

When you're one of the few without a K9, you get to hide in the woods for them to find you! 

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous fall day in Michigan. 

For one of the games, we were told there was a pumpkin with a clue by one of the team member's cabin (who swore there were no pumpkins by her cabin!).  We saw there was a tiny hole drilled in the bottom of the pumpkin, so we had to cut it open and found a roll of paper that said "It's a good day for ice cream.  Grab your spoon and go to the freezer".  We trooped up to the main lodge where the mess hall is and found a tub of ice cream with our team color written on it that clearly had been tampered with.  We dug in with our spoons and found a pill capsule that had a Halloween postage stamp in it.  That led us to the mailbox out by the road that had a set of GPS coordinates taped to the back.  The coordinates were for a fire pit on the beach with a balloon.  We couldn't use a lighter or matches to start a fire and burn thru the string.  Then we had to take a pic for proof.  So there's my knife & flint.  We weren't sure what else to do with the balloon so we took it with us back to our meeting hall.  She asked a couple trivia questions about the red balloon and a yellow raincoat - which confused my teammates - so I'm glad I knew a little bit about IT so we got them all right. 

So we were able to confirm that Pennywise was a suspect. 

One of the other participants made chocolate raspberry cupcakes with homemade skeletons and raspberry gummy worms. They were amazing. 

So that night, we got word that 3 actual human kids were missing and the K9s were assigned sectors of the camp & nature center to search.  By then it was dark and had started raining, so I opted to stay back and play radio.  They were all found and interviewed to get more information and sent home.  Between that, and people wanting to take their dogs thru one area where HR was, we didn't get over to do the haunted house (see my last post) until like 2am!  Then we still played a game of Jeopardy with themes like Knots & Ropes, Medical, Maps, Scent Theory, etc.  

It's been a long time since I've been up until 3am! 

Sunday morning, we had to be up and out of the camp by 8am and not return until 10am. 

This was the actual mission to find out who the killer was.  I was one of 2 support people for an HRD (human remains detection) K9 named FFion.  Cutest little border collie!  My job was to use the radio and we both kept an eye out for clues and to make sure the handler didn't wander anywhere unsafe since she was keeping her eyes on FFion as she roamed at will.   

Not far from Jason's mask was a suet cake cage with "source" that was submerged.  

It was FFion's first water find!  

Even funnier yet, was the fact that the director from my SAR team had come by to pick up some navigation points from out in the woods and parked his truck downwind from where Jason was found.  So FFion was showing strong interest, circling his truck and jumping up on the front bumper!  So when I saw Jerry out in the woods, I asked if there was something we should know?  

We found a bloody knife near the canoes - and that lump out there is Michael Myer's mask which had "source" in it - FFion had to swim out there, but she couldn't touch bottom so she didn't know how to indicate!   

The third location we went to was a giant spider web with random body parts in it and "source" was hidden up in a fallen tree so FFion had to climb and was about 15 feet up to find it! 

I personally never knew Pennywise turned into a spider at the end of the movie, so I was confused as to what this scene had to do with.  But now I know!

So we were able to figure out the Michael & Jason & Pennywise were no longer suspects.  

These were just the ones I was involved with. 

I was also the support person for another K9, Blaze here indicating that he found the mannequin that was supposed to be Elvira. 

The cemetery where a bunch of unknown victims were buried. 

Basically, we never would have figured out who the killer was!  

There was an older guy there, Tom, who was helping out with whatever was needed. 

He was the killer!  The story was - Elvira was his little sister.  As she got older, she got sort of chunky and it really affected her self esteem and since she'd been - cough- friends with benefits with Freddy, Jason, Michael, Pennywise & the Mummy, she was upset when they made fun of her.  She took her own life with poison, and Tom took out the rest of the suspects!  

Some cool random mushrooms. 

I thought this knot was pretty neat, too. 

So as usual, Camp was really fun and educational.  We got to use GPS & radios and see how other teams work with their dogs and equipment and the spooky aspect is always a good time! 

Oh, we think the purple time cheated, since they ended up with $20 more creature cash than us so my green team came in second.