text: Hey everyone, I'm Matt. I work at a state park as a ranger. I am a historian by training and oversee all of the historic and archaeological features. I feel like I am at the bottom of the totem pole because I am not in wildlife or land management. Something weird is going down around here, but no one believes me. I hope that *someone* out there will take this seriously and get someone to investigate it. It started a couple weeks ago when I got called to the campground around 1:00 in the morning. Our quiet hours start at 11:00 PM and this group was keeping other campers awake. The caller said she had gone over and asked them to keep it down but they seemed to take that as a challenge to be as loud as possible. I quickly dressed in my uniform, jumped in my truck, and headed for the campground. Going over a hill, I began to hear the ruckus. The chanting of five 20-somethings instantly caught my attention. It was like they were speaking in tongues; no coherent words or patterns to their chants. My heart started racing and crazy thoughts started pouring into my head. *WTF?! Are these people possessed? Did they get some bad beer? Should I just call for backup now?* I am not a law enforcement ranger, so I am not issued a gun or endowed with any authority to detain or arrest people. I parked my truck and, armed with just my dull pocket knife, a flashlight, and some padding from my dad bod, walked toward the group. "Excuse me! I'm Matt, I'm a ranger here." I called once I was within earshot. "Hey! Sir? Ma'am? Folks, I need to talk to you guys real quick." Chanting young adults was strange on its own. What really caught my attention, though, was how they laid out their camp. Five tents arranged like points of a star, with a round platform in the middle. Four posts surrounded the platform. I would have to talk to them about whether they paid the fees for the extra tents. And I had so many questions about the platform. "Hey! You guys are being *way* too loud! Quiet down or you will have to leave." The chanting grew louder. Each person was sitting around the fire with their chairs arranged in the same way as their tents. Nothing was strange about their behavior other than the loud chanting. Everyone was just casually sitting, some roasting marshmallows, some with cans of beer. Just chanting louder and louder. I approached the fire, repeating that they were being inconsiderate and breaking our campground rules. No one reacted. I started breathing heavily and feeling a bit dizzy. I have overcome confrontation anxiety enough that I can approach people who are breaking rules. Usually people see my truck and my uniform then apologize and change what they are doing. A lot of them don't even realize they were breaking a rule so it really isn't a big deal. Getting nowhere with these weird people and growing anxious, I turned to head back to my truck. I could say I tried to contact them and just call the county dispatch to send a sheriff's deputy. Which is exactly what I did. Three deputies responded and when one came to get a statement from me, she said there had been no people there. No tents. No fire--in fact the fire pit was cold and hadn't been used for several hours. They had woken up campers from surrounding sites and none had reported any noise issues or suspicious behavior. I gave my statement and she left, saying something about crying wolf to the dispatcher.