We took a group of Year 8 students on a weekend trip near an old mining site. It was uneventful. Hiking, campfire, early bed. The next morning, a few of the kids thanked us for
“the night lesson.”
We asked what they meant. They said my co-teacher and I had woken them after midnight, taken them down a trail, and told stories about miners buried near the creek. Apparently, we’d let them each touch one of the old grave markers
“To feel the history.”
We hadn’t left our tents. Neither of us. When we checked the trail later, there were footprints—two sets of adult prints leading away from camp, with twelve smaller ones following. They ended at a row of crooked stones none of us had seen before.
That night, one of the students woke up screaming. He said he heard someone outside his tent whisper,
“It’s time for another lesson.”
