Horror Movie Fans Will Love This East Coast Campground

If you've ever dreamed of visiting Camp Crystal Lake, the setting of the original "Friday the 13th" movie, you're in luck. While there is a real-life Camp Crystal Lake in Florida, it is not the same as the one where the movie was filmed. "Friday the 13th" was shot on location at an actual camp in New Jersey called No-Be-Bo-Sco. That mouthful of a name is short for "North Bergen Boy Scouts." Yes, funny as it may seem, "Friday the 13th," one of the foundational slasher movies of the 1980s, chose to film at a summer camp for Boy Scouts.

Located in the township of Hardwick near Blairstown, New Jersey, — where the state with the most diners lent one to the filming of the town scenes in "Friday the 13th" — Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco is almost 100 years old. It was founded in 1927, and it still draws Boy Scout troops from across America every summer. This unfortunately means you can't just wander into the camp and start Instagramming about it anytime you like. The camp is on private property in the Kittatinny Mountains, and it's off-limits to visitors outside the official Crystal Lake Tours.

The good news is, Crystal Lake Tours has select dates available for several weekends during the off-season when you can visit Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco and tour the "Friday the 13th" filming locations. The cabins and other locations still look like they did in the movie, so you're liable to feel as though you've stepped right into "Friday the 13th."

"Friday the 13th" came two years after John Carpenter's "Halloween," and it begins in a similar way, with the camera assuming the perspective of an unseen killer stalking amorous teens. The dining hall where the teens do a sing-along of "Down in the Valley" and "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore," and the loft where they retire to make out before meeting their grisly end, are just two of the locations you might see with Crystal Lake Tours. Other possible sights include the Camp Crystal Lake sign and the green jeep driven by Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer).

There are three types of tours offered in May, September, and October, and the specifics of each tour vary. The 2.5-hour lakefront tour runs $99 plus tax, and it focuses on sites around the lake where Jason Voorhees popped out of the water in the famous ending jump scare, inspired by the movie "Carrie." If you want to see more filming locations around the camp, your best bet is probably the 3.5-hour extended tour, which adds other locations away from the lake (for $149 to $169, depending on the weekend).

When we ran down the list of spooky movie hotels and cabins where you can spend the night, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco wasn't included because most of the public tours since they started in 2011 didn't feature an overnight option. In 2018, however, Crystal Lake Tours began offering a special "VIP overnight experience."

There are evening versions of the extended tour of Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, allowing guests to explore the grounds by flashlight. However, the overnight experience takes things to the next level, letting you enjoy the full extended tour, plus activities like a marshmallow roast around the campfire, a screening of "Friday the 13th" in the very camp where it was filmed, and canoeing on the lake like the movie's "Final Girl," Alice (Adrienne King). At $799 to $899 per night, the experience isn't cheap, but how often do you get to sleep in one of the cabins used in the filming of "Friday the 13th?"

You'll be sleeping on a mattress on top of a cot, and they recommend that you also bring a sleeping bag, along with other essentials like bug spray and a beach chair for the movie screening. We recommend that you check under the cot, too, to ensure there's no killer waiting under there to shiv you with an arrow, like Kevin Bacon's character in "Friday the 13th."

Should you need to visit the restroom like his girlfriend, you really will have to exit the cabin for another building, so you also might want to be vigilant there and make sure no one's creeping up on you with an axe. If you forget to bring a raincoat, you can buy a movie-authentic yellow poncho in the gift shop, and if you can't get tickets right away, there's always the waiting list.