Contains spectral manifestations, philosophical dread, mild intoxication, and irresponsible hypotheses. Readers prone to metaphysical dizziness or lakeside anxiety are advised to anchor their minds and avoid unsupervised reflection after sundown.
THE STEAMBOAT DISPATCH
July 17, 1882
From our Correspondent in the Shatagee Woods
DREADFUL APPARITION OR MERELY
A LOCAL PECULIARITY?
Your humble East Bellmont correspondent, ever the patient chronicler of our region’s many disquietudes, finds himself once again in the unenviable position of reporting on events that test the boundaries of credibility and common sense. This past Saturday, near the western shore of Chateaugay Lake, a series of unnatural disturbances have compelled me to take pen in trembling hand. The facts—if, indeed, they are facts—are thus related.
Mr. Silas P. Bellows, a woodsman of local renown and a man known to be as sober as a deacon (at least before sundown), stumbled into the Lake View House in a state of dire agitation. His account, given between desperate pulls at a jug of something best left undescribed, concerned a grotesque figure seen near the old iron forge, standing motionless in the tree line. “It weren’t no man,” Mr. Bellows insisted, “nor beast neither. It had the look of something caught in the middle of deciding what it ought to be.”
Further questioning revealed that the entity—if entity it was—appeared featureless, like a smear of darkness upon the landscape. It was said to move in fits and starts, flickering from place to place, accompanied by a sound best described as a wet sigh issuing from a throat too narrow for breath. Mr. Bellows, a man not given to metaphysical indulgences, declared that he felt his thoughts unravel in its presence, as though the beast (if beast it be) was plucking through his mind like a miser thumbing over coins.
Others have since come forward with corroborating accounts. Mr. Emory Fitch, known for his skill in laying stone walls and drinking whiskey in equal measure, reported that he saw the thing—or something like it—looming in the shallows of the lake at dawn, “not floatin’, not swimmin’, but just—bein’ there.” Meanwhile, the unfortunate Mr. Clive Ransom, a surveyor’s assistant of fair reputation and weaker constitution, claims he awoke to find his boots missing and his ears filled with an inexplicable whispering.
Speculation runs riot. Miss Temperance Woolsey, who fancies herself a scholar of the esoteric, suggests that the creature might be a wraith of the Abenaki, cursed to wander the lake forevermore. Dr. Phineas Mudge, a scientist of no small reputation (though in what field precisely, no one can say), proposes a more fantastic origin—that we may be dealing with a “temporal echo,” a being unstuck from the fabric of time itself. The good doctor further postulates that prolonged exposure to such an entity might explain the peculiar failures of memory and sudden lapses of reason experienced by certain residents (though others argue that a steady diet of corn liquor is the more probable culprit).
The matter remains unsettled. For now, I advise caution to all readers with an inclination toward evening strolls along the lake’s edge. Should you hear a sighing in the reeds, or see a shape where no shape ought to be, do not tarry. The mind, like a well-made boat, may weather many a storm—but some tides are not meant to be crossed.
R.L. Whitmore, East Bellmont Correspondent, The Steamboat Dispatch
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?