There is something magical about them and if you've ever had the full campfire story experience, you'd know what I mean. While entertaining, campfire stories must be handled properly. There are some rules you must observe in order to keep the story telling ?pure?.

One must experience the stories while actually in the company of friends sitting near a heat source that contains a flame (preferably a fire). The whole scenario works best when it's done outside, preferably at a campsite. If you can't manage to find a campfire, a campsite, or even a wooded area then you might want to try gathering around a candle while sitting on your porch or somewhere at least out-of-doors.

The story teller must speak clearly and loudly enough so that listeners the farthest away can hear the story clearly. Sound effects are helpful. The ability to speak in different tones to represent several different characters can be helpful as well. One must be able to speak "high" and "low". This is particularly important when the story teller is a man with a deep voice and he has a female character in the story. This can lead to humorous circumstances. Charles must be able to sound like Charlene.

The speaker should have his face only partly illuminated by the flickering light source. Full illumination and broad daylight are to be avoided. Anything before 7 or 8 o'clock at night is probably a complete crap-shoot. Temperature is important also. A cool night works best because of the heat source (i.e., a campfire), although I suppose a candle-lit story-telling vigil on the back porch would not become excessively hot.

It doesn't matter if the story is spooky, scary, thought-provoking, or humorous. I prefer humorous, but based on actual events. Many times, the stories can be spontaneously generated when an observation of an event that occurred earlier in the day or earlier in the camping trip is recalled. Be sure to spend some time preparing the story so that you can tell it in a composed and congruent manner. Avoid the phrases "eerrr...", "uuummmmm...", and "no, I mean, wait a minute, ah, never mind..."

Giving the characters funny names seems to help the stories along quite a bit and one will often find that the names given during the story-telling sessions sometimes carry over into the next day and sometimes they stick for good. This is especially true when the stories are based on characters present for the story-telling session. When crafting names for the characters, one must be careful not to make them too demeaning so as to provoke retribution from others as they concoct their own stories. I would highly discourage names like "Fart-sniffer and "Snot-picker". They are too obvious and could result in retaliatory naming toward the story-teller. Occasionally, the person for whom the character was named is present at the story-telling and he/she fails to realize that the character is them. If that's the case, feel free to embellish undesirable traits the character possesses and enjoy yourself as the so-named person finds humor as you describe the poor sap.

Well, these are only some of the rules you should follow to avoid campfire-story-telling-dysfunction (CSTD). Be sure to follow these rules and share your stories as often as you can. I wish you many happy camping trips and wonderful story-telling sessions. And please, oh please, do not take this article too seriously. It's all for fun. Cheers!