At 5:15 a.m. on a Sunday morning in June, about 150 people staying at an adult-only campground in Stannard awoke to the sound of rapid gunfire. Some campers said they saw two figures in the distance.

For roughly two minutes, the sound of round after round rang out. "This is for last night," one of the people shouted, according to multiple campers.

Chaos ensued.

"I emerged from my tent to find my fellow camp mates moving about, confused, scared or panicking," said a camper who asked to remain anonymous to protect their safety.

A few campers ran to a nearby trailer and took shelter. Some noticed a silver truck roll past the campground, blaring its horn for close to a minute.

"We spent perhaps 90 minutes or two hours, I'm not particularly sure, in that camper waiting, not knowing whether we were going to be victims of gun violence that morning," the anonymous camper said. "We were consoling each other, hugging each other, crying and worrying."

Nobody was hurt, and there was no evidence that bullets were fired in the direction of campers. Still, the scene was not what Jeff Jensen and Craig Geisler, co-owners of Vermont Freedom Campground, envisioned when they opened the clothing-optional camp in 2019. The Wisconsin couple stumbled upon a listing for the Northeast Kingdom campground and, on a whim, decided to change their retirement plans to realize their dream of operating a clothing-optional camp. They fixed up the grounds, purchased a hot tub and installed privacy screens at the entrance of their wooded lot. Jensen and Geisler hoped to create a welcoming oasis where anyone could enjoy time in nature au naturel.

Since then, Vermont Freedom Campground has become a summer destination for a dozen or so "seasonal" campers — many of whom are gay men — and has also welcomed hundreds of daily and weekly visitors of every sexuality, gender and clothing preference. For the most part, the campground has stayed under the local radar while gaining a reputation in the queer community as a welcoming place for nonconformist campers. And, according to Jensen, the campground's neighbors have seemed comfortable with the enterprise, often attending events.

"We accept everybody," Jensen said. "It can be hard when you feel that you're so different from anybody else that you can't fit in anywhere."

More recently, though, that feeling of acceptance has been challenged. In sleepy Stannard, population 208, a clash of personal freedoms has put the campground on edge.

Jensen had always hoped to draw people who might want to organize events such as yoga retreats or community gatherings at the campground. Over the summer, Paul Gaudreau, owner of Massachusetts-based Blackbeard Endeavors, reached out, hoping to hold two weekend events for what he calls his "kinky-minded and sex-positive" community. The first event that Gaudreau planned, The Awakening, was held June 8 to 11. It featured activities such as a dildo toss, a "pet play" roundtable and strap-on fencing.

The Renaissance-themed event started without a hitch on a Thursday. Around 130 people — mostly out-of-staters — traveled to the campground, where they donned items such as corsets and nipple covers.

On Saturday night, Alicia Patten, who lives across the street from the campground, said she called the police because the noise kept her family up. "I didn't move out to the country to listen to that," Patten said, comparing the racket to the Champlain Valley Fair.

"I want everyone to be able to do stuff on their own property," she added. "But I also want neighbors to be respectful and mindful of their other neighbors."

The police arrived, and the group quieted down, according to Gaudreau. Attendees headed to their tents, many of which were pitched on an open field near the entrance of the camp.

The following morning, the campers awoke to the sound of gunfire.

Jensen and Gaudreau were shaken. Some neighbors of the campground told Seven Days they were, too.

"With mass shootings happening all over the place, it felt like, Are we going to have another mass shooting?" Gaudreau said.

Gaudreau called 911, and the state police responded. According to Gaudreau, police told the frightened group that Vermonters are allowed to fire guns on their property.

State police told Seven Days they're investigating two complaints, one from the campground and one from a neighboring property. At this time, no charges have been filed. Cops declined to provide more information, citing the ages of some of those involved. Seven Days has a pending request for police records.

The night before the gunfire, Ben Hewitt, the town zoning administrator, visited a sheep farm across the street from the campground. Its owner, Johanna Polsenberg, invited him to assess the sound levels at the campground. She's an environmental advocate who is on the Stannard Planning Commission.

"She was highly agitated, is the term I would use," said Hewitt, who noted that the event was loud. "If I lived across the street from that, on that particular evening, I would have also been a little bummed," he said.

Hewitt explained to Polsenberg that there was nothing the town could do. Technically, the campground was not in violation of any town mandates. According to Hewitt, Polsenberg said something about using a gun to make noise in the morning. He said he assumed that she was joking and felt there was nothing threatening about her statement.

"It was clear to me what she said was about making noise, not about being violent," Hewitt said.

Asked by Seven Days whether she had fired a gun on June 11, Polsenberg said she had "no comment" and added that she owns "40 acres next to the campground."

Other neighbors seemed to have little issue with the campground's noise. On June 10, "We had our windows open, and we didn't hear anything," said Jan Strickland, who lives near the campground with her wife, Maria Messier. They did hear the shots the next morning. So did Hewitt, more than a mile away. He said the loud gunfire actually generated more complaints than any of the events preceding it.

Gaudreau considered canceling a subsequent Blackbeard Endeavors event that was scheduled from August 17 to 20 but decided not to. In the days before, Polsenberg sent an email about the upcoming event to Jensen, Hewitt, the state police, and officials in the state Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division. Polsenberg wrote that she worried about the size of the event, its potential lack of compliance with Act 250 guidelines surrounding wastewater management and potential harm to the town's "fragile roads."

"I have had really no problem with the campground up until maybe the last two summers when they started inviting large groups of people," Polsenberg told Seven Days, adding that she had attended drag shows there. "I just don't want our town to become some carnival ground," she said. She repeatedly said the campground's clientele — and what they do behind closed doors — doesn't bother her.

Hewitt, who has acted as a quasi-mediator, said he could not find anything in the town ordinance that would prohibit the events hosted at Vermont Freedom Campground. Leading up to the August festival — which Gaudreau advertised as a carnival-themed "freak show" — Hewitt said Jensen was "dotting his i's and crossing his t's" to ensure that the campground complied with town and state ordinances.

During the August "freak show," Polsenberg didn't notice any excessive noise coming from the camp late at night. "I wasn't paying any attention," she told Seven Days.

But throughout the four-day festival, according to a number of campers, two teens harassed festivalgoers. On Wednesday night, as Gaudreau and his team set up, someone drove a pickup truck on a road outside the campground and blared the horn for a long time. The next day, according to Gaudreau, teens drove doughnuts on ATVs in front of the campground and yelled homophobic slurs. Gaudreau said that the harassment continued through Friday.

"If you're gay, that's something that you hear frequently," Jensen said. "In one way, you get immune to it."

Finally fed up, Gaudreau and some staffers from Blackbeard Endeavors approached Polsenberg and others outside her home around 10:30 p.m. on Friday. They recorded the confrontation and provided it to Seven Days.

Polsenberg said she felt threatened by men she didn't know approaching her house late at night and pointing flashlights at her. At one point, the video shows, a young man with Polsenberg said he was going to get a gun; she told him not to.

Gaudreau called the police. Troopers responded and suggested he apply for a restraining order.

Since the altercation, the camp owners and Polsenberg have exchanged few words. Jensen said he doesn't plan on changing anything about his campground and won't be deterred. Gaudreau, though, is unsure whether he feels comfortable hosting events there next summer.

"All my guests really raved about the campground and how nice and welcoming Jeff is," Gaudreau said. "But [the gunfire] was very traumatic and scary to our group of people."

Some neighbors said the conflict made them feel unsafe. Messier and Strickland, who said they moved to Vermont last year to escape harassment they experienced in Florida as an openly gay couple, find the situation disturbing.

"That's why we came up here was to get away from this crap," Strickland said. "I just fear that we left the state of hate and we've got it in our neighborhood now."

Hewitt hopes the rural town can work it out.

"We are a small and, I would like to think, welcoming and tolerant community," Hewitt said. "My most fervent hope is that this can be resolved."