Have You Heard of The Highland Houndsman? (Part 1)

Has anyone here ever heard of The Highland Houndsman? What about his dog, Ziggy? I’ve been searching all over the internet, scouring every possible corner I can over the past few days, and I’ve found nothing. Seriously, nothing, not even a hint. It’s bizarre. I’ve found adjacent legends like Cropsey, but not a thing about the Highland Houndsman. 

The only people who know anything about it are those I attended Camp Faraday with. It seems like he only exists in our minds, in our own urban legends told around the campfires and through word of mouth and scary stories.

I remember those days. They were some of the best of my life. 

Camp Faraday was our private paradise for just one week out of the summer in the mountain woods of upstate New York. It was there that I created my fondest memories with my closest friends. 

Camp Faraday was set up for children who lost a parent. In my case, I lost both and was raised by my grandmother. Despite the tragic circumstances that led us there, what we found when we got off of the bus was a dream. In lieu of the family we lost to get there, we gained a new one in each other. I found my best friends in the world—my brothers. During that magical week, whatever troubles we took with us were abandoned at the edge of camp. 

Our different backgrounds didn’t matter, especially not back then when we were so young. We meshed together. We’d rip on each other and pull pranks to no end. We’d laugh until our stomachs hurt. We’d bond over our nerdy interests and debate which fictional character would beat the other in a fight. And most importantly, we’d be there for each other, a shoulder to lean on when it mattered most. We had someone to talk to long into the night, someone to confide in and share each other's pain with.

See, my friends at home didn’t get it—not like the camp friends did. In those moments, whether you were a white kid from Connecticut like me or a black kid from Harlem like Deiondre, it didn’t matter. We were all the same. Our bonds ran much deeper than any of the ones with my friends back home. I could never explain it to my home friends. Their inability to understand made the camp bond all the more special.

You'd think that seeing them once a year would mean we weren't as close as my other friends, but you'd be wrong. If anything, that made things more pure. When we saw each other, our eyes lit up and we picked up right where we last left off. They wouldn’t disappoint me. They were always there.

But my memories of Camp Faraday would be incomplete without The Highland Houndsman. I can’t remember how I first heard about him or even where the rumor first came from but I know it existed long before I got there and long before my oldest bunkmates got there. 

Hell, even my counselor, Justin, knew about it, and he promised he’d tell us the story if we all behaved one night. We never felt so motivated. We quickly fell into line, and we corrected anyone who was misbehaving. We needed to hear this story. Finally, when all was settled, when it was time to tell scary stories, we gathered around Justin as he lit up the flashlight under his face.

“Do you know the real reason why you’re not allowed to go into the woods past midnight?” he asked.

He revealed that it was because that was when the Highland Houndsman roamed around with his dog, Ziggy, he’d kill any camper who went far into the woods. That was why we had to stay within the camp lines. That was why we had a curfew. In truth, we were being protected from the evil that lay out there.

I remember the shivers all up and down my spine, but I was still intrigued to no end.

What was likely told as a simple urban legend and a reason to keep us in line became our obsession. Soon we became lore experts. We demanded to know every little detail of the story, and when we didn’t have any, we would fill in the gaps. 

It’s all blurry now. 

What was part of the original urban legend that Justin told us and what we made up I'm not sure anymore. I now realize that half of the legend that I remember was essentially the result of a really, really bad game of telephone played by a bunch of hyperactive kids with wild imaginations. More than half, most likely. 

Who was the Highland Houndsman and who was Ziggy? Nobody knew for sure and that drove us crazy. Aside from the baseline, here’s what I remember all of these years later:

I think the Highland Houndsman only had one eye. I don’t remember whether he lost one eye somehow, had a deformity at birth, or if there was another reason; however, I’m sure we had theories about it. I think he had a hat too. Whatever the case, he was scary-looking in my mind, that’s for sure. I think he may have had X’s all over his body, but that one may have just been us getting carried away with the details. 

Ah, who am I kidding? All of this was us getting carried away with the details.

See, one of the other lore bits we came up with was that if you had three X’s drawn above your bunkbed, that meant that he was going to kill you. Not sure how that bit started, but it led to a lot of fear and a lot of Xs above people’s beds in our bunk. 

Most of them didn’t even look threatening. They were drawn with colored pencils or whatever we could find. Yup, a lot of us became bad actors and drew above each other’s bunk beds to scare them. Looking back, I think that was just a way for us to A) prank each other and B) keep us involved in the action with the Houndsman as an active threat so that way we could keep the scares and the entertainment going without actually having to walk into the scary woods past midnight. 

There were also more rules we’d make up, or we’d pound on the outside of the cabin walls to scare whoever was inside, and then we’d say it was Ziggy or The Houndsman. I’ll admit, I took part in that one a couple of times.

At a certain point it became more fun than scary. It was fun being scared. It really brought us together.

We’d come up with ways to “defeat” the Highland Houndsman and Ziggy too. Like there was this special wooden “artifact” I found in the woods that I decided was some sort of mystic Native American item or whatever that we could use to defeat him. It was probably just some old, rejected arts and crafts project that someone tossed in the woods, but it didn’t stop our imaginations from running wild. 

Or we’d find cool-looking rocks scattered throughout camp that we thought, when combined, would give us the power to defeat them. Crap like that.

As for what the Houndsman used to kill us? Sometimes I remember picturing a hunting rifle—ya know, him being a hunter and all—but other times I remember him having a hook for a hand. Maybe he had both? 

Although now that I think about it, the hook hand was probably stolen from Cropsey—another more famous local urban legend. Cropsey was an escaped mental patient with hooks for hands who would kidnap kids in the woods. Then again, the whole legend could have been stolen from Cropsey. 

Like I said, a game of telephone.

Ziggy was his “dog,” but I always pictured a giant, monstrous, grey wolf-like beast. Essentially, imagine a giant hellish evil zombie dog and its hellish evil zombie owner—that's who the Highland Houndsman and Ziggy were.

Everything changed one night at the end of our third year. I was 8 years old. I was always the runt of the group. The others were 9, which meant we were big kids now. We could do anything. 

For years, we talked about how we would sneak out past midnight, but there was always an excuse—we’d get in trouble, we had to wake up early—all just excuses. The truth was that we were scared. But this time I was determined. 

I felt extra brave and I asked others if they were feeling brave. Most weren’t but there were a few—just a few—that were. Deiondre, my best friend, was always up to the task. He was almost 10, and he was the biggest, tallest, gentlest giant. If anyone would have my back, he would. Then there was Alfie, who I knew for a fact would be in. That kid feared nothing. He was the one person, I think, that was more excited than me about this. When I came in with enthusiasm, he matched it tenfold. Even if I wanted to quit, I knew he wouldn’t let me. Last came Jacob. If Deiondre was my right-hand man, Jacob was my left, and if we were finally doing this, then there was no way in hell he’d miss out.

After everyone was asleep, Justin stepped out to see his summer fling—another counselor named Mary. It was time to pounce. We got up and out of there! 

We rounded the corner behind the cabin, flashlights in hand, but we didn’t dare turn them on yet. Not until we were sure we were in the clear and that nobody in the cabin next door would see us. At that point, we were more scared of getting caught by the counselors than we were of the Highland Houndsman. 

Once we passed through, we walked a little further, and I felt the fear start to creep in. I started lagging to the back as Alfie plodded along, taking the lead, moving faster, not slower. I felt a sinking feeling sink deeper with every step as we passed the cabins.

“Wait!” I whisper-yelled, but Alfie was already too far ahead. “Slow down!” I whisper-yelled louder. It was no use. Deiondre looked back to me, and then he got the others to stop.

“What? You s-s-s-scared?” Alfie mocked me.

At that point, I had to swallow it down. “No way.”

Before I could protest any further, he was off. Deiondre looked at me and asked if I was okay. I swallowed my fears. I followed. Further into the woods. Flashlights turned on, finally.

I was scared, sure, but I wasn’t about to be a big baby over it.

We stepped closer and closer to the borderlines. It was okay. I had my friends with me. Soon we were over.

Suddenly, we hit the woods and I felt a tingle in the back of my neck and those little hairs stood up. I had this chilling feeling that we were being watched.

Alfie went further ahead, moving into some bushes and beyond them. If we were in uncharted territory before, now we were really going beyond. A point of no return. 

Jacob followed. I breathed in and plodded along, the flashlight trembling in my hands as my head darted around in search of whatever could have been watching me.

That’s when I heard it. 

Some loud, inhuman sounds I can’t even begin to describe. Like an inner guttural shout mixed with I don’t even know what. Whatever made the noise, it didn’t sound like a dog or anything that I knew. 

Even now, I find it difficult to place the sound. I’ve tried over and over again to transcribe the sound but my words always fall short. So I’ll just leave it at that—the horrid sound I heard that night was downright indescribable, incomparable to anything I knew then and know now.

Alfie’s scream immediately followed. My head jolted in his direction for a split second before I turned around and bolted. 

In that moment, everything else disappeared as my flashlight illuminated the path before me. I only prayed that Deiondre was following behind me as I sprinted back, my asthma kicking in. I wheezed until I hit familiar territory, then bolted further. Faster. Up the stairs. Into the cabin. Slamming the door behind me!

The others stirred at the sound of the door and asked what happened, but my eyes felt blind and my ears deaf over my panic and wheezing.

After a moment catching my wheezing breaths, the chilling realization dawned on me. I had left my friends out there alone with that thing. Were they dead? Had I left them to die?

I looked to the closed door and pondered. I froze. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave them. I couldn’t decide, so I just froze. It took me years to gather the courage to go out there, but in an instant, at the first sign of trouble, I lost it and ran away without a thought, abandoning my friends.

An eternity passed before Alfie and Jacob burst in the door, followed by Deiondre, who slammed it shut behind them and looked out of the window. Alfie collapsed to the floor in hysterics, hyperventilating, and crying. He was inconsolable, having a full-on panic attack as tears streamed down his face.

“What happened?” One of the others asked. All joined in as Alfie cried in the corner. Deiondre and Jacob checked the windows. 

I looked to Alfie as he trembled with unimaginable terror. It was contagious. It was like whatever had been on the other side of his eyes had been seared in so deep that it forced tears to pour out like blood.

Jacob screamed out for a counselor. So loud that I thought anyone within miles could hear.

I scolded him. I didn’t want to get in trouble. Besides, bringing an adult in would just make it all more real and I’d rather have just begun pretending it didn’t happen.

“I don’t care! Didn’t you see it?” Jacob’s eyes welled too. It wasn’t quite as bad as Alfie’s but beneath those tears lay a similar knowing look. The eyes of someone who caught a glimpse of something that our child eyes were not meant to see.

A neighboring counselor came in and comforted us—well, as best as he could. We tried over and over again to get Alfie to talk, to speak, to say anything. To tell us what happened. But he wouldn’t. He also wouldn’t sleep. They took him down to call his mom.

That was the last time I ever saw Alfie. Despite all of our begging and pleading, he never came back to Camp Faraday.

I’ll never forget the fear in his eyes. It didn’t matter if what was in the woods was real. He believed that the threat was real, and as a result, we lost one of our best friends to a monster that likely doesn’t exist. It was all my idea. Sure, he was more enthusiastic, but I still blame myself.

Rumor was that Alfie refused to tell anyone what he saw, even his mom, and that there were talks of lawsuits. Years later, he still hasn't told, that I know of. I could never find him on social media, so I never kept up with him.

Jacob was the only other one who claimed to see something, but when pressed for details, he couldn’t give much. And Deiondre and I could only describe the noise. We were lucky. We weren’t the ones in serious trouble. Our counselor, Justin, was.

We had a big camp meeting—from then on, stories of the Highland Houndsman and Ziggy were banned by all counselors. It was bad for business. No more pranks. 

That was fine by us. We had already lost one of our friends due to the pranks, and now we had also lost our favorite counselor. Justin and Mary were fired for negligence. 

Thus, our third summer hit more of a sour note, but by the end we picked up again. The rest of us made a promise that this wouldn’t taint our memories of this place and that we’d return next summer for a better one.

During our break, things changed. I matured and thought about things as I recounted details to my mom, my family, and my friends. I mean, Alfie was always a drama queen anyway. I remember he cried when Benny accidentally knocked his ice cream cone out of his hands two summers before. He made a whole 30-minute ordeal out of it. Just imagine how upset he’d be over a stupid prank, especially after all of these years of buildup. And Jacob? He didn’t even know what he saw.

The next summer it was business as usual, minus Alfie, which sucked, but we carried on like it was nothing. If anything, it drew us closer to each other. Toward the end of the first night, as we hit a quiet part in the night where we reflected, I came to an important realization.

“So the last three years were all about The Highland Houndsman and Ziggy, and let’s be real, we all know they’re not real anymore. It was just a prank.”

Everyone agreed. I suppose by this time we’d all matured a bit. We all knew. We had decided it was time to grow up and stop believing in our childhood monsters. It was bittersweet; it had brought us a lot of great memories as well as some bad ones, but even then we came out stronger because of the bad ones. It was time to put it to rest.

I still look back on that night, on that realization between all of us, as one of the moments when we grew up.

“So what now? What’s this year’s monster going to be?” I asked.

“Yo Mama!” Deiondre responded, and everyone burst out laughing. Even as I type this, now a 21-year-old man, I laugh at it. Such as a stupid, low-effort joke, but the way he said it will always make me laugh; I don’t know why.

Now it hurts a little knowing that I’ll never be able to hear him say it again.

My heart sank when I saw pictures of him and the accompanying words on Facebook. I remember dropping my phone when I first read the words ‘passed away.’ I let it slip through my grasp. Who cared that it hit the ground?

My hand shook. The world fell still as I took a moment to gather myself. 

He was gone. My best friend was gone. I would never see him again. My first thought was regret. How could I let my best friend go? Why did I never reach out? I scrolled through our texts. 

The last one was a brief exchange years ago. I asked him if he’d be at New York Comic Con that year. He said he couldn’t make it. I said we’d meet up after but I got too busy. Oh well. Next time.

We always think there’s going to be a next time. We’re usually right, until one day we’re wrong, and we never know when that day will be.

My mind sent me back to that one time on the rock. It was our favorite spot in the world. It was a big rock buried into the hill next to our cabin, between it and the edge of the woods. It was ours and we made damn sure that every other bunk on camp knew it. We would chase off any younger camper who dared to take control. Sometimes we were nice and let them join us, but there was no mistaking it—it was ours. 

The older bunks knew it was ours too and stayed away. In truth, they probably just didn’t care enough to fight for it, not like we did. To them, it was a rock. To us, it was more. We’d even fight each other over it in games of King of the Hill, endlessly running back up the hill after getting pushed off to claim the throne. Betrayals, alliances, and a whole lot of fun and fake violence. 

There never was a real winner.

Most of all, it was our spot, where we could just talk.

One day we got the news that there were only two more years of Camp Faraday before it would close down. We talked, we vented, and we were scared. 

How could it be over? What if we never see each other again? I told them with shameless tears in my eyes that I was afraid to lose all of them.

Deiondre put his arm around me and spoke in his ever-comforting voice, “No matter where we are in the world, no matter what happens, I will always be there for you guys. Always. You’re my best friends in the world. You’re my brothers.” He was right. We were brothers, family, our bonds were deeper than blood.

We promised we’d stay in touch even after camp ended. We’d promised we’d see each other every year no matter what.

Then reality set in. Life got in the way.

And now death got in the way.

Deiondre had been working a construction job when an accident occurred. He and several others were killed. I’m not sure of the exact details, but from what I hear, it was bad. Really bad.

As soon as I found out about his death, I reached out to every single friend from our bunk that I could find before the wake.

Most got back to me. We talked, and it wasn’t the same as when we were on the rock; however, we wanted to keep in touch. I asked if they were going to the wake. Most couldn’t and that broke my heart, but I swore I’d move heaven and Earth to be there. The only other bunkmate who will be attending is Jacob.

I’ll ask him for more details about The Highland Houndsman and Ziggy when I see him. I wish I could still ask Deiondre. 

While I’m at it, if any of you have a lead on Alfie, let me know. Poor kid. I just told his most traumatic story online, but I’m sure he’s over it by now. If not, that’s all the more reason to talk to him.

Also, if anyone wants to fess up about playing the sound and pulling the prank on us that night, that would be great. In fact, more than 10 years have passed since Camp Faraday ended. You won’t get in trouble! 

Hell, you can even confess to me privately if you like. I won’t tell!

Anyway, I’ve droned on long enough. If I find anything new about the Highland Houndsman and Ziggy, I’ll let you know, and I expect you guys to do the same.

Oh, and one last but arguably more important thing: Reach out to that old friend or loved one. Tell them how much you love them. 

You never know when it will be the last time.