14/07/2025
Amelia Moore, 14, had been awakened by a clap of thunder so near that it shook her cabin at Camp Mystic. There were screams in the night. She and her friends in “Angel’s Attic” were growing anxious.
Go back to sleep, a counselor urged them.
But soon, other girls on Mystic’s Senior Hill began to crowd into Angel’s Attic and another cabin, Cloud 9. Theirs were filling with water, they said. Two of those other cabins, Hangover and Look Out, were lower down the hill and would be submerged.
Amelia heard more screaming, too. It was coming from an area just across the river known as the Flats, where Mystic’s youngest campers were clustered.
For campers in Giggle Box, one cabin in the Flats, water rose so quickly girls couldn’t open the door, according to one camper’s account. Girls climbed out the windows instead.
When Amelia awoke around 7 a.m., she and the other girls discovered they were stranded. “We were so hungry. We were starving,” she recalled.
They joked about the storm, believing that they had borne the worst of it while the younger girls on the Flats had been spared. This notion was reinforced when counselors—either misinformed or trying to prevent panic—told them that the younger campers were all fine, and had ridden out the storm in Rec Hall.
Don’t worry, they were told, the younger campers were happy and fed, and had evacuated to Mystic’s newer campus, Cypress Lake, just up the road.
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