The Rick Story

This may be the strangest story I will ever write in this blog. It certainly is the most unbelievable tale I tell. I cannot explain exactly what happened, so I'll try to simply convey the events as I remember them.

In the late 1960s, I was a member of the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor's youth group called PF, which stood for Pilgrim Fellowship. Our group had some amazing retreats during the three years I belonged there.

Every winter we had a retreat at the University of Michigan Fresh Air Camp on Strawberry Lake in western Washtenaw County. The camp had a large lodge building and several small cabins. On our winter retreats, we all stayed in the lodge, using the kitchen and main rooms for sleeping and eating, as well as doing the programs provided by the youth minister, Ron, as well as his wife and other adults who helped chaperoned the PF group of 31 high school teens. 

As I was leaving my house for one of the retreats to the Fresh Air Camp, I was lugging my sleeping bag and a backpack full of clothes through our kitchen to get to a car waiting for me outside. As I grabbed the kitchen door handle, a tall cupboard above a counter opened, and a large glass tumbler tumbled out, landing on an iced birthday cake on the counter.

Being a not-very-aware teenager, I picked up the glass, looked it over finding no icing on it at all, and returned it to its place in the cupboard. I closed and latched the cupboard and went on my way. I didn’t give it another thought until much later, after the strange happenings at the retreat.

We arrived at the camp happy to see lots of snow. The winter was cruelly cold and snowy, but the camp looked beautiful with its pristine coating of white. We trudged through to put our gear in the lodge and get ready for the events of the afternoon and evening. It all went well.

That night, friends Chuck and Roger and I were not sleeping. All of the boys at the retreat were in one large room in sleeping bags on the floor, while the girls were in another large room with a divider between. Everyone seemed to be sleeping, with the occasional sounds of people using the restroom. The deep snow outside and the stillness inside made for a quiet night.

Chuck, Roger, and I had placed our sleeping bags in a T-shape, with our heads in the junction. We were whispering with our heads together as we snuggled down in our sleeping bags to stay warm. The three of us talked for a long while, but were suddenly interrupted by roaring coming from the basement. The sound is difficult to describe: it sounded like water pipes shaking with air in them, with a distinct roar that was loud enough we could no longer whisper to be heard. We talked to each other at a regular volume, wondering how others continued to sleep with the racket.

Eventually, we grew tired of the noise. We began joking around that maybe it was a ghost trying to talk with us. It turned out I was the only one who knew someone who had died. My good friend Rick died when we were in sixth grade after hitting his head on ice during a pick-up hockey game. He wasn’t wearing a helmet.

Rick was my best friend, first through fifth grade. In our fifth grade year, his father moved his family from Berkley Street near Michigan Stadium to the northwest side of Ann Arbor.  That was sad for me. I counted on his father and Rick to be my surrogate family. They taught me so much over the years.

Rick's father had been my Little League Baseball coach from tee-ball. I enjoyed overnights at their house. We cried together when his mother passed away. We were eight at the time, and it was so hard on Rick and his brother, Brad. His mom had been ill for a long time. His father never seemed happy after that. I felt so badly for them. I tried to help out when I was there, but I think I made Rick feel he wasn't doing all he should when I would do more chores than he would, and with less complaining. I saw that I was less welcome as the last couple of years of their time on Berkley Street.

About a year after the move, Rick was playing ice hockey in a pick-up game at Vets Park when he fell and struck his head on the ice. He walked home, complaining of a headache. Once at home, he began vomiting and was taken to a hospital. He died there from his injury.

Since I was the only one of the three of us that night at the camp who knew someone who had died, we played along with the idea that Rick was making the pipes roar. None of us seriously believed this, but we told Rick to stop the pipes making the noise.

The noise stopped. And we laughed at the coincidence. I said, “Okay, Rick, if it’s really you, start the pipes again.”

Immediately the pipes began again. We tried to laugh, but it was difficult. We suddenly weren’t so sure, were a little nervous, even.

We asked Rick a few more times to turn the pipes on and off. Each time the noise complied. None of us were frightened, but we just kept trying to make sense out of what really was unbelievable.

Eventually, we came up with a code of that allowed us to ask yes or no questions. Throughout all of time we spent asking the impossible to answer improbably, we didn’t really believe what was happening was real.

Our questioning revealed that Rick was there to warn someone at the retreat. That was as much as we could discern. We were tired, and didn’t believe what we were doing anyway. With one last request of my friend that he leave the pipes off, all three of us went to sleep.

At breakfast in the morning, we related the story to the PF members. No one believed us, not surprisingly. What was surprising was that they all claimed they didn’t hear the pipes making any noise, even though many admitted they were awake at different times during the night. Chuck, Roger, and I were not believed by anyone.

After cleaning up the mess from the meal, I went to the basement of the lodge to find the pipes. The basement ceiling was finished, so there were no pipes to be found. I wandered around the basement for a while, trying to make sense of the night before, eventually dismissing it to imagination and coincidence. I left and went to join Chuck. We brought our skates and were going down to the lake to try them out.

The water was 100 yards or so down hill from the lodge. Chuck and I trudged to the lake carrying our skates. The cold was stiff with a bit of wind, yet the day was sunny. The breeze had cleared parts of the lake giving us some areas to glide around. Chuck was first on the ice. I laced up my skates and joined him. As soon as I hit the ice, I started some long stokes to catch up to my friend. It felt good to skate, to move in the sunshine.

Then I suddenly stopped, spraying snow from digging my blades into the ice. The pipes were roaring again! The sound was soft, but unmistakable. Chuck and I could hear it all the way down the hill to the lake. We looked at each other, frozen in disbelief.

Then we heard the ice cracking beneath our feet. Bubbles under the ice were moving. We took off for the shore as fast as we could skate. As soon as we were clear of the ice, the sound from the pipes stopped.

We put our boots back on and clambered up the hill back to the lodge. Inside, out of breath, we started relating the story to the others. They looked at us as though we were crazy. They all said they heard nothing, even Roger said the pipes made no noise that they heard.

I’d heard enough. I went again to the basement to look for, well, for something that would explain what was happening. The ceilings were covered, as I said before. There was nothing to see, nothing to do.

I found a small corkboard with thumb tacks on it on a wall about half way down the hall. I stood there playing with the tacks, eventually making the outline of Rick’s initials, RS. I fumbled around with the tacks until I heard people in the room above calling me to join the group. It was time for our final PF activity before departing.

I walked up the stairs and joined the others sitting in a circle. I was the last one to join the group. Ron began the exercise. Part way through Ron’s explanation, the pipes began to roar, louder than ever, and this time everyone heard them. Ron tried to talk over them, but the louder he spoke, the louder the pipes roared until finally, Ron gave up. He shouted over the pipes that we should pack up and get ready to leave the Fresh Air Camp.

I ran downstairs hoping I could find the source of the noise before it stopped. As soon as I hit the basement floor, the pipes were silent.

I looked down the hall. Halfway down, just below the corkboard, I could see tacks on the floor. I walked to them. When I got there, I looked at the board. There, in small letters, were my initials, TT, made with tacks. On the floor were thirteen tacks. I counted them as I picked them up and placed them back on the board.

I don’t claim to understand what happened. I don’t think I believe it myself. I can only say that all that I wrote is what happened that weekend at Fresh Air Camp on Strawberry Lake. A couple of days after the weekend, I recalled the incident with the cake on the counter as I was leaving for that retreat. It seemed to fit with the rest of the unexplainable events.

I never drew any conclusions from the events. Was there really a spirit? Was it Rick’s? Was he trying to warn us that the ice was dangerous? Why didn’t others hear the noise until the end? What did it all mean? Did it mean anything?

Draw your own conclusions. I’d love to hear them!