Friday the 13th’s Camp Crystal Lake is an active Boy Scout camp in New Jersey. You can take a tour, if you can get tickets.
Camp Crystal Lake Tours run on weekends through October. It's the site where the original "Friday the 13th" was filmed.
HARDWICK TWP., N.J. — When a film crew uses your rural Boy Scout camp to make a gory, slasher movie where frisky teens are knocked off one by one, you make the most of it.
Most of Friday the 13th, a classic horror film released in 1980, was filmed at Camp NoBeBoSco, a Boy Scout camp site about 100 miles north of Philadelphia, in Warren County. The 387-acre camp opened in 1927, making it the oldest continuously run Boy Scout camp in New Jersey. Every summer, hundreds of kids make their way here, learning how to shoot a bow or paddle a canoe. Many know about Jason, the hockey-masked killer who, according to the original film, drowned in the lake there as a boy.
“It’s hard not to know at this point,” one camp employee said.
Trespassing fans of the film became a larger issue as the internet and social media expanded, so in 2011, the Boy Scouts followed the lead of many museums and historic buildings: They embraced a little horror. Crystal Lake Tours have been a surprise fund-raising boost for the Boy Scouts.
Tickets range from $89 for a short tour to $159 per person for the extended tour, and all of them sell quickly. Camp Crystal Lake has hosted sleepovers in the past. The gift shop, which guests visit before and after the tour, offers a mind-boggling array of keepsakes few hardcore horror fans can resist: a bottle of lake water, campfire ashes, canoe paddles, even vintage flashlights for $120. According to a camp employee, donations given for the ability to take photos by the Camp Crystal Lake sign brought in over $21,000 for a cancer charity.
Given the nature of the movie (10 people are killed, including a young Kevin Bacon) and the camp’s real purpose during the summer, it’s not shocking the North Jersey Council of the Boy Scouts of America doesn’t want to talk about their tour business much. After repeated calls and emails to both the council and Crystal Lake Tours, the Boy Scouts ultimately declined to comment.
The Inquirer took the tour anyway.
On Friday, Sept. 30, the first official tour of 2022 kicked off around 12:30 p.m. with a half dozen cars lined up along the quiet, winding road that led to Camp NoBeBoSco, renamed Camp Crystal Lake for the next month. There were nine fans, including this reporter. The tour doesn’t allow professional photography, but a nearby diner also in the film let The Inquirer snap away. Most tour guests had a T-shirt featuring Jason’s iconic hockey mask, which, surprisingly, doesn’t appear until the third film.
Husband and wife horror fans drove down from New Hampshire with an encyclopedic memory of the film and all of its dialogue. One fan was from western North Carolina and impressed with how rural New Jersey could be. One couple flew in from Berlin, Germany, for an East Coast vacation sprinkled with horror .
“We visited the Part 2 location [in Connecticut] cause it was on the way. I do a lot of research,” said Alex Schumann, 41.
None of the three tour guides was willing to give their names. Each of them had a long history with the camp, both as children then later as volunteers, and keeping Camp NoBeBoSco running for generations to come is their priority.
“Please be aware of bears and rattlesnakes,” one told the visitors.
All of the guides are caught up — or catching up — on all the legends, secrets, and hidden gems involved with the film. They have to be. The super fans notice continuity issues, the distances from one murder scene to another, or the brand of tire on a replica Jeep.
“Anyone want to guess how much we were paid for the filming location? It’s alluded to in the film,” a guide asked the group.
The extended tour is around four hours, with a one-mile walk that includes some uphill trails to the archery range. Each tour location, including an old workshop, a generator room, and the fabled canoe, was accompanied by a placard that showed a scene from the film. Guests used them to orient themselves and get the best pictures. The generator room, where one character is murdered in the film, was open to tourists for the first time.
“There’s employees who haven’t been in this building in 20 years,” a guide said.
When the guests came to other familiar locations, they often blurted out the accompanying dialogue.
“We ain’t gonna stand for no weirdness out here,” they said, emulating Officer Dorf in the film.
Crystal Lake Tours, over the years, have included numerous props — snakes, arrows, and a machete — into the scenery and even re-creates some filming locations out of empty cabins. They try to pay attention to detail, looking for vintage Monopoly games, old gauges for the generator, or the right hue of yellow to match old New Jersey license plates. Stars of the movie have taken the tour and participated in events, particularly the overnights. Kevin Bacon has yet to come back.
“But he hasn’t said ‘no’, ” one guide said.
Toward the end of the tour, the film’s most iconic image, a lone canoe floating on the pond, came into view. Guides declined to tell one guest how it got there, and why the water was bubbling, ever-so-slightly on this cool autumn day.
“It’s Jason,” was all they would offer. .
There’s more filming locations in Warren County aside from Camp NoBeBoSco. At one of them, the nearby Blairstown Diner, images of Jason Voorhees were everywhere, along with fliers for Friday the 13th events.
“There’s people in and out of here all day to take pictures,” said waitress Erin Karolchyk. “You have to embrace the weird.”