CHATEAUGAY LAKE STEAMBOAT GAZETTE CO.

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WENDIGO WELLNESS
Photocopied Promotional Pamphlet, 1962, Banner House, Chateaugay Lake

“Shed the Winter Weight—Like a Caribou Shedding Its Pelt!”
The Wendigo Wellness Retreat at the historic Banner House invites you to return to your primal self. Guided by our Forest-Fasting Protocol™—a harmonious blend of lean meats, lake-foraged roots, and psychospiritual exposure therapy—you will unlock your ancient, wilderness-adapted metabolism.

Come hungry. Leave… lighter.

☉ Sessions led by Montreal’s renowned metabolic mystic, Dr. Étienne Rousseau.
☉ Restorative Ritual Hikes to the ruins of The Forge.
☉ “Mirror Lake” Self-Image Reflections (at sunset, fasting required).
☉ Ethically-sourced guest chef rotations.
☉ Signed print of Arthur F. Tait’s “Arguing the Point” with premium plan.

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Transcript: Staff Memo, Tape Reel Labeled “Nettle Room Incident” – June 19, 1962
Magnetic tape degraded – playback glitchy. Transcript incomplete.

Nurse Elsie: Room 6 called again. Says the fish on his plate winked at him and told him to “forgive the lake.”

Dr. Rousseau: That’s progress. He’s resisting the transformation.

Nurse Elsie: We’re out of tea.

Dr. Rousseau: Give him birch-bark infusion. Call it “pioneer adrenal purge.”

(pause)

Nurse Elsie: The guest in Room 9? She buried her food ration in the old ore shaft. Said she “heard a daughter of Bellows call to her from below.”

Dr. Rousseau: Good. She’s breaking her lineage fasting loop. Next phase: silence therapy.

(inaudible whispering noise; wind?)

Nurse Elsie: …Something’s dripping from the attic vents again. Smells like… jerky.

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Note, handwritten in margin of guest registration log (June 21, 1962):

“Do NOT assign anyone to Tait’s old room. The mirror still shows the argument.”

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Clipping from Franklin County Gazette, June 23, 1962:

BELLWOODS OR BELLWOES? LOCAL FOLKS QUESTION “WENDIGO WELLNESS”

Chateaugay Lake—Once the summer playground of Currier & Ives muse Arthur F. Tait and Boston’s trout-charmed elite, the Banner House is now host to something… stranger.

Dr. Étienne Rousseau, who claims descent from “North Country Shamans,” prescribes fasting hikes and “thermal soul rewilding” near the collapsed kilns.

“My grandfather guided for Bellows,” says one local. “Those kilns? Burnt things that never cooled proper. Now they’re telling folks to stop eating? That ain’t right.”

Mrs. Chase, third-generation proprietor, insists the program is safe and spiritually invigorating. “Guests leave lighter,” she says. “Much, much lighter.”

No comment yet from Franklin County health officials. One guest, speaking on condition of anonymity, claimed her hiking group “got lost inside the woods for three days.” Mrs. Miles—next-door and keen as a weasel, her dogs striking up at supper like a mill whistle—allows they never left the dining hall.

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Journal Fragment, “Room 7,” discovered behind dresser drawer post-closure:

June 24 –
I followed the ritual trail past the boathouse wreck. The trail forked where the map said it wouldn’t. I smelled tallow.

I think I saw Tait—not the man, but the shape of his missing debt. It was arguing with the tree-line.

The lake reflected something that wasn’t me.

This place is an old lie. A very old lie carved into a lake that remembers every calorie.

The others are thinning too fast. One girl whispered to her toast this morning, and the toast bit back.

I want to leave. I want to eat. I want the lake to forget me.

But my stomach is gone, and the wind is telling me I’m almost beautiful.

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Recipe Card from Banner House Kitchen – “Wendigo Stew” (unsigned, undated):

Ingredients

• 1 lb lean venison
• Handful of fresh leeks
• Water from “Miller’s Spring”
• Mushrooms only you can hear
• Final ingredient: hunger (enough to make you forget your name)

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Final Guest Ledger Entry, circled in red pencil:

July 2, 1962
“Last confirmed guest: Pauline Chase (age 9). Listed as ‘Nutrition Volunteer.’”

No check-out recorded.

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Postscript (penned in graphite on inside wall of empty dining room cupboard, rediscovered 1973):

The Banner flies still. But no one waves it. They’re all too thin to lift their hands.

The lake knows your caloric deficit.

Eat or be eaten, child of the Forge.

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End Transmission.

The only wellness that remains is the thing that watched the forge burn and wept for the charcoal.
Wendigo Wellness. Let the hunger guide you.

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