Jason was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. For me, a kid born in 1986, two years after Corey Feldman buried a machete in Jason’s face, there was never any doubt that Jason Voorhees was as dead as a doornail.

But that didn’t stop him from coming back.

Trips to the video store had me mesmerized and terrified by the infamous hockey mask, watching me with hollow eyes from the covers of so many slipcases (one even had a demon slug squirming out of the eyeholes!). By the time I finally saw the movies—my cousin was a connoisseur of the great slashers and his shelves were lined with Freddy and Jason—I was horrified to see Jason’s flesh bubbling and tumescent around that mask, his body waterlogged and rotting from so much time in the lake. When that mask split open, I would see the angry yellow-eyed glare of a monster that could not be contained by the grave.

Yes, Jason had always been dead, as far as I was concerned. (It would be college before I ever learned he was once arguably alive.) But it was Jason Lives, the sixth film in the Friday franchise, that set the standard for forty years of undead Jason, turning him into an unstoppable, supernatural force that stomped off the movie screens and into the hushed, frightened whispers of horror kids for generations to come.

He’s Back: A Short History Of Jason’s Resurrection

In 1984, Paramount brought back Tom Savini to bury a machete in Jason’s eye socket for what the studio promised to be The Final Chapter.

The franchise’s fifth film, A New Beginning, brings back Corey Feldman, watching as a pair of graverobbers dig up Jason’s grave, only for Jason to rise up and slaughter them all.

But it was a trick; a lie; a nightmare sequence serving only to bridge the ending of the last film and the beginning of this one. Returning to the whodunit formula of the first film, Jason was reduced to a mask worn by a new killer with new motives. And though the box office return was enough to immediately greenlight a sixth film, the audience response was disappointment.

They didn’t want a new killer. They wanted Jason back from the grave for real. A year later, they’d finally get what they were asking for.

I’d Rather Deal With Old Jason: The Man Behind The Mask Returns

On August 1, 1986, audiences watched, once again, as Jason crawled from his grave. This time he was played by former Marine and nightclub owner, CJ Graham, who had been chosen to don the mask when casting directors saw him playing the infamous slasher in a night club act.

“It’s like all of a sudden you get to put a baseball uniform on, and you’re the pitcher in the ninth inning of the World Series,” Graham says about getting to play Jason, “It’s an incredible feeling” (Bracke).

Opposite him, Thom Mathews, fresh off his starring role in The Return of the Living Dead, was cast as the new Tommy Jarvis, the boy who had put Jason in his grave and wouldn’t be able to rest until he knew Jason was gone for good.

Image of a corpse in its coffin, a steel rod through its heart and lightning bolt shooting down into him, reanimating him. — Jason’s grave in *Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives*.

Yes, from the very start, this Friday feels different from the others. Tom McLoughlin’s background in comedy, and his gothic inspirations, are immediately apparent in Jason Lives.

In the opening scene, lightning cracks across the sky and our hero races to the graveyard to destroy Jason’s body. It feels like we’re watching Dr. Van Helsing race into Dracula’s crypt to dispatch him before it’s too late. If the film were in black-and-white, you’d think you were watching a classic Universal picture.

Tommy’s efforts have the opposite effect. A crackling lightning bolt strikes the iron rod he has driven into Jason’s corpse, reviving him like Frankenstein’s creature on the slab. Jason slides the mask over his rotting face before arming himself and turning toward the audience, a flash of lightning illuminating his return.

“If I can get the audience to buy that he’s the walking dead,” McLoughlin says, “I can do anything, and there’s no stopping him” (Bracke).

The resurrection is immediately followed by a pastiche of the standard James Bond opening, with Jason stalking across the opening credits to turn toward the audience and slash at the screen, sending blood dripping down into a crimson title card.

McLoughlin’s film satirized the horror genre while also celebrating it. Kills were as gory as ever, with a dash of self-awareness thrown in, winking at the audience as the horror played out. The characters seemed to realize they were in a horror film, a full decade before Kevin Williamson popularized meta-horror with Scream.

Jason Lives seemed intent on breaking every trope the franchise had built its foundation on. The only sex scene in the film is played for laughs, fully clothed. The cops are prepared for Jason, coming at him with shotguns, for all the good it does. Instead of slow-paced tension, you had action-packed car chases set to the music of Alice Cooper (who went on to write The Man Behind The Mask, a Jason-centered rock theme, for the film). And who needs a final girl when you’ve got a final boy like Thom Mathews, luring Jason back into the lake where he drowned, trapping him at the bottom of Crystal Lake for all eternity.

Or at least until the next film.

Jason Lives was unlike any Friday film that had come before it and any Friday film that would come after. It’s easy to see how the film, despite its weak box office opening, has become a cult classic hailed by fans and critics alike as the best of the franchise. A film that has left fans wanting more and more of good old Jason.

What A Lovely Way To Go: My Trip To Camp Crystal Lake

By 2016, I’m spending my free time at a few live-action role-playing games, or LARPs, usually hosted at off-season summer camps, creeping through the woods, trying to avoid zombies or whatever big bad we were facing that month. Most of them are fantasy or sci-fi, but even those genres take on a sinister tone when the sun sets and you’re alone in the woods.

And I get the idea that it would be even scarier if Jason were somewhere in those woods, stalking me. (Ki-ki-ki, ma-ma-ma.)

Friday the 13th, the date I mean, came twice in 2017. Once in January… and once in October.

I can’t get this idea of a horror LARP out of my brain—it haunts me like Jason haunts Camp Crystal Lake—and the idea of letting such an ominous date pass in October feels like a sin.

I’m a big dude, 6’3”, heavy with muscles. Put me in some distressed clothes with a hockey mask and I make a pretty good Jason.

But I also know one Jason isn’t enough. He has to be able to catch you even if you’re running and he’s only walking. You have to leave him behind only to find him inexplicably ahead of you.

I’m gonna need at least two Jasons.

I barely get the question out before Krystina, a fellow horror fan and Friday fanatic with as menacing a build as mine, eagerly agrees to don the mask as well.

We called it Camp Blood, using the nickname given to Crystal Lake in the Friday films. It was an immersive horror camp where “campers” would come to enjoy the camp life during the day—swimming in the lake, playing kickball, hiking in the woods—and, at night, they would come face to face (or face to mask) with the Crystal Lake Killer himself. A survive-the-night experience combining LARP standards with utter terror.

As my one friend, Nicholas, put it: “It is never not scary when Jason comes at you out of the dark.”

After testing the idea on our friends, we opened the experience to the public, and we were amazed by the passion people had for it. Friends you make at Camp Blood tend to be friends you make for life.

It was at one of these events that we met Mary, a Virginia resident and lifelong horror fan who bravely came to Camp Blood alone, finding no one willing to wander into the woods with her. She returned for many experiences after that, volunteering her time and energy to help bring horrific moments to life.

As the experience grew, we got bolder, even going so far as to dig a shallow grave, place a decrepit tombstone at its head, and bury my friend under loose soil, all to have Jason crawl from his grave and stalk the campers once more.

With Camp Blood being such a success, and Jason Lives being my personal favorite, I soon got the idea to take the experience on the road, maybe even host the event at some of the famous Friday filming locations. And what better place to start than Camp Daniel Morgan in Georgia, where they filmed the movie more than three decades earlier?

March 2020. Only a couple weeks before COVID will shut down the entire world. I’m in Rutledge, Georgia, on an overcast day, driving to Hard Labor Creek with Krystina and Mary. We’re going to check out Camp Daniel Morgan, intending to build an on-location immersive Jason Lives event in time for the film’s 35th anniversary.

The camp looks very different from its appearance in Jason Lives, but arriving there feels a bit like uncovering Jason’s grave. It’s not alive like it once was, but the bones are still there. Some parts are rotting, but walking through the camp I get flashes of moments from the film.

The bunkhouse, where a group of horrified campers hid under their beds, waiting for Jason to turn them into dead meat, is still standing… but just barely. The windows have been boarded up and the building has a distinct lean to it. It’s too dangerous to enter safely.

Though the docks are missing the overhead lamps that illuminate the dark waters so well, they’re the place in camp that feels most like the movie. Dangling our toes into the cold waters, it’s easy to imagine Jason reaching up and dragging us under.

A murky lake with a narrow dock. — The docks of Camp Crystal Lake in *Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives*.

But it’s when I’m alone at Camp Crystal Lake that the panic hits. My traveling companions had returned to the Hard Labor Creek State Park Welcome Center to use its amenities. I’d elected to stay behind and do a bit of exploring. It was peaceful… for a moment. But then I got the sensation that someone was watching me. It’s hard to shake the feeling. Even in daylight. Walking through this camp that I so closely associate with blood. That’s when someone came out of the woods, moving with purpose.

To this day, I have no idea who they were. They were across an open field, and all I could make out were heavy boots, jeans, and a work shirt. Before I hid, that is. It wasn’t a thought as much as an imperative. I saw a stranger at Camp Crystal Lake and the urge to hide could not be ignored.

So, I scurried behind a small shed, close to the water’s edge, pressing my bulky body against the side of it, trying my best not to be seen. Maybe that man was a hiker. Or a park ranger. Or maybe it was Jason, returning to what would always be Crystal Lake for him.

I’ll never know. I stayed hidden until my friends called my name. Only then did my courage return. I had come planning to put on the mask, but instead found myself feeling like a camper. I knew this was just a filming location, but my body instinctively reacted as if it were the film itself. While hiding behind the shed though, I’d had a terribly awesome idea. My friends seemed confused as I dragged a canoe toward the water’s edge, where Tommy had sunk Jason to the dark depths below. Where Jason still waited, chained to the bottom.

I struggled with the canoe, one of those wide metal ones. It left divots in the mud as I pulled it toward the docks. Neither of my companions helped me, trying to dissuade my antics with their silence. But I had not traveled 773 miles, waking up at 3 a.m. for an early flight, and come to Camp Crystal Lake just to snap photos of a few locations.

Finally, I got the heavy canoe into the water and, my struggles ended, I turned to my companions.

“Who’s coming with me?”

Krystina stayed behind… alone… as Mary and I rowed across the water. Well, Mary rowed. I did my best, but it turns out I’m not very good with canoes.

Reaching the other side of the creek, and what appeared to be a large island, we realized we had no way of securing our canoe. Tying it to a branch with one of our life jackets, we hoped it wouldn’t float away as we wandered into the woods.

Not quite spring yet, the trees were bare as we moved through them. Nothing seemed to be living here. And then we spotted something ahead of us, a tangle of twisted limbs. Mary skipped off toward it, excited to see what we would discover in the woods around Camp Crystal Lake. Catching up to her, I saw that we had discovered a burned tangle of bed frames; the kind used as old camp cots. As if there had once been a cabin here that maybe burned down.

Intrigued and excited by this terrifying discovery, we pushed on, deeper into the woods, and it wasn’t long before we came across an abandoned summer camp. Older than the camp we had just come from, some cabins left open and some locked behind aged doors. We had seemingly walked into a Friday the 13th film.

We peered through dirty windows, seeing strange shapes that we couldn’t quite make out. At one point I even hefted Mary onto my shoulders and lifted her into a doorway that sat four feet off the ground. If there were any buildings here where Jason was waiting, this was it. But she was stopped by yet another locked door. And as she went to peek through the keyhole, I once again panicked and stopped her. It was too easy to imagine an ice pick coming out of the keyhole and stabbing into her eye.

After we had tried every locked door, and after our brains had warned us of every possible danger, we eventually left this old camp behind, certain that this was the real Camp Crystal Lake, only a stone’s throw away from the filming location, and the man behind the mask would emerge at any moment.

Back at Camp Daniel Morgan, Krystina was waiting on the docks, a cold breeze disturbing her peace. Like me, she had begun to feel watched, and was anxious that we had been missing for so long. Did we have an accident? Were we hurt? Had Jason got us? What was that sound?!

We later learned that the abandoned camp we’d discovered was in reality the Civilian Conservation Corps Camp, established in 1934, where young enrollees helped convert worn-out farmland into Hard Labor Creek State Park. It had a history of its own, a site in need of its own conservation.

But, in our horror-loving hearts, it would always feel like we had discovered some dark secret place around Camp Crystal Lake.

Our efforts to build an immersive Jason Lives event—which included attempts to contact CJ Graham, Thom Mathews, and Tom McLoughlin—were foiled (ironically) on Friday, March 13, 2020, less than a week after we returned from Georgia. We had plans to attend a Friday the 13th trivia night only to have it canceled by the worsening pandemic. Everything else was shut down soon after.

We Dug Up His Body: The Legacy Of Jason Lives

The nice thing about a franchise like Friday the 13th is that there’s something for everyone. Die-hard fans will always be split on which is their favorite. But, forty years on, time and time again, we see Jason Lives rise to the top of the charts.

After the groundbreaking original, Jason Lives has the highest score on Rotten Tomatoes. And even Kevin Williamson, writer of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, has admitted that Jason Lives and its self-referential tone helped inspire his own work. Jason Lives director, Tom McLoughlin, was even given the chance to direct Scream, back when it was still called Scary Movie.

And the fans are still clamoring for more.

In 2017, Vincente DiSanti, founder of Womp Stomp films, released their fan film, Never Hike Alone, a stand-alone story about a hiker who finds himself facing off against Jason when he wanders too close to the old Camp Crystal Lake. It’s hailed as one of the most successful fan films of all time, not least because the film features Thom Mathews reprising his role as Tommy Jarvis for the first time in 31 years, still spouting off insults at old maggot-head Jason.

DiSanti would go on to release Never Hike In The Snow and Never Hike Alone 2 with Mathews again falling into his Tommy role and being joined by Vincent Guastaferro, who played Deputy Rick in Jason Lives. Combined, the shorts make up a full-length fan-made direct sequel to Jason Lives.

And that’s not the only one.

In 2019, CJ Graham returned to the franchise in the fan-made sequel, Vengeance. Inspired by a deleted ending that Tom McLoughlin had written for Jason Lives, the film introduced CJ Graham as Elias Voorhees, Jason’s father, who returns to Camp Crystal Lake with his own supernatural secrets.

Despite both CJ and Tom returning to the franchise via feature-length fan films, the only place to see them together is at the many conventions they attend.

I had the pleasure of attending a Jason Lives 40th Anniversary Reunion in May 2026, finally getting to meet the cast and crew after having walked through the camp six years earlier. I was able to get them to sign a replica I had made of Jason’s decrepit tombstone.

It’s amazing that forty years later, the cast and crew are still greeting fans, new and old alike. Even those who have moved on from the industry, like Kerry Noonan, who played Paula in Jason Lives and has since gone on to earn her PhD in Folklore and Mythology. She exuded all the warmth and kindness her character radiates in Jason Lives. Tom McLoughlin, the rock-star director of Jason Lives, is still eager to chat with his fans, discussing his influences for the film and regaling them with stories from the production. Thom Mathews even picked up a shovel and faced off against his old nemesis, Jason, played by CJ Graham in full makeup and costume, allowing fans to snap photos with them in a nearby graveyard scene.

The evening was capped off with a screening of Jason Lives attended by the cast and crew, a viewing that I imagine was as surreal for them as it was for the fans.

Who knows what would have happened to the franchise had Tom McLoughlin not dug Jason up? It was the sixth film that resurrected Jason so he could go on to star in five more films, allowing the infamous Kane Hodder to become the Man Behind the Mask, eventually leaving Crystal Lake (for better or worse) to visit Manhattan, Hell, and even outer space. It was his undead status that allowed him to face off against Freddy Krueger in the long awaited Freddy vs. Jason. And even now, forty years later, they keep finding ways to bring Jason back.

In the prequel series Crystal Lake, Linda Cardellini stars as Jason’s mother, Pamela, proving, once again, that a story like Jason’s will always find a way to keep coming back.

Whatever your thoughts on the franchise, it can’t be denied that Jason still lives. And somewhere in Georgia, maybe in the woods that surround Camp Daniel Morgan, there’s an empty grave with a decrepit tombstone that we have to thank for it.

“Oh, but he’s back!
He’s the man behind the mask,
And he’s out of control.
He’s back!
The man behind the mask,
And he crawled out of his hole.”
—Alice Cooper, “He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask)”