Warning: Depicts relentless psychological torment, creeping tendrils, and shadow‑cloaked figures stalking isolated campsites. Not suitable for younger audiences or those with trauma triggers; intense suspense, atmospheric dread, and visceral descriptions could induce panic or nightmares.
They say the Moon begged her Mother for a silken gown, but in the Shatagee Woods, cloth is spun from rot and sorrow. When the Moon pleaded, “Make me beauty,” her Mother gathered tattered cattail down and dripped it in swamp water. She wove the gown beneath ancient pines, each thread soaked in the wailing of drowned girls.
By New-Moon’s eve the gown hung limp on a warped rack, seams fracturing like cracked bone. The Moon slipped it on anyway—its fibers slurped flesh. She staggered, face puckered in the shapeless rags, a lantern-eyed horror drifting across marsh mud.
“Change your shape,” croaked her Mother from the black water’s edge, “or wear the half-light always.” The Moon, trembling, tried fullness: her orb bloated—then ruptured, raining oil-slick tears into the reeds. Swamp frogs drowned in the silver sludge.
From the depths rose the Milfoil Queen, her hair tangled with hornwort and bone. She offered the Moon a savage swap: skin of living pond-green leaves, stitched with the sighs of lost girls.
As the Queen stitched, the Moon’s bones cracked—each seam a snapping joint. The gown writhed, sprouting tendrils that gripped her like barbed rope. She howled, and the night swallowed her song.
Dawn found the Narrows calm. On the shore lay a single cattail thread, glistening with dew and flecked in blood. No gown, no Moon—only a puddle of pale, pulsing sap.
At Banner House, the barge captains whispered of a new passenger: a headless lady adrift on a skiff built from swamp-rotted timbers. They burned a saddle-blanket to keep her at bay, yet each night she scratches at the hull, begging for a fitting shape.
Dr. Tillinghurst, visiting from Troy, scoffed at their tales—until his reflection in the lake winked without eyes. He vanished next moonrise; all that floated back was his silver watch, snapped in two.
Now, when the fog drifts low, you’ll hear her half-shredded gown whisper across the reeds. And in the rustle of milfoil, the Queen laughs—because some gowns refuse to be unmended.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?