"Small towns don't change much over the years. If anything, they get even smaller. The children grow up and move away to bigger towns and bigger opportunities. Those few that stay behind replaced the old folks as they died, providing not so much an infusion of fresh blood as a dose of Geritol. Just a small shot of tonic to keep the old town going. Businesses closed, perhaps losing their customers to the new shopping mall in the next town or simply finding they're unable to complete in an economy that is increasingly geared towards mass production and cheap foreign labor rather than quality and service. The regulators sit at the bar or at the soda fountain. Some still exist and if you can find them, they're generally worth looking for and they tell remember when stories or whatever happened to stories. Remember when Al Clary's little girl run off with that motorcycle gang back in '56? And when the police picked her up in… where was it? Brattleboro? She come home with that tattoo. Damn, you could hear old Al scream clear over the county seat.

"Whatever happened to Bonnie Clearly anyway?"

"Heard she went out to California. Married some producer."

"What? Bonnie? Married a producer?"

"Shoot. No kiddin', really? What I heard. Course, you know what they say 'Everyone out in California is a producer,' right? She ever get in any pictures? Knowing Bonnie, if she got into any pictures, they ain't the kind you'd show your mother."

Often, there were particular stories that were told over and over. Stories that become part of the folklore of the town, part of its history. In Crystal Lake, it was the story of 'Camp Blood.'

'Camp Blood,' as it came to be called, was the place on the outskirts of the town, about ten miles down the country road owned by Christy family. For 20-some odd years, the story had survived, passed down orally like an Indian myth. It survived because it possessed all of the ingredients that made for a legend. It centered on a place: Camp Crystal Lake. Only the locals called it 'Camp Blood' and its focus was violent death and mystery. The mystery was that no one had ever learned who caused the deaths or why, and it concerned a local family: the Christys, who owned the place and tried to fight the legend to no avail. Ever since 1958, each time they tried to get the camp going again, something stopped them; stopped them in a way that only added to the legend of 'Camp Blood.' Some said it began in 1957, after that young boy had drowned. His name was Jason Voorhees, Pamela Voorhees' boy. A shy child, quiet and strange, went swimming alone out in Crystal Lake.

They never found his body. Other said it began in '58, when those two young camp counselors were killed. They found the horribly mutilated bodies in the barn, hacked to pieces.