CHATEAUGAY LAKE STEAMBOAT GAZETTE CO.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
—Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I

Steamboat Gazette, Week of October 3, 1927

Yes, Mr. Editor, it appears that our placid, storied Chateaugay Lake has once again become the stage for the uncanny, a realm where spectral wonder and local lore coalesce in a display both eerie and, one might confess, rather droll. Tonight, I bring before you an account of a phenomenon that defies both mortal expectation and the common measures of natural philosophy—the mysterious apparition of a phantom canoe, said to be piloted by an ineffable “Spirit Guide.”

Our tale commences on a crisp autumn eve, when Monsieur Pierre Leclerc, a French-Canadian trapper of no small renown, exclaimed with a flourish most theatrical, “There are more spirits in our woods than there are stars in the heavens; behold, the canoe that is neither wholly dead nor entirely alive!” His words, delivered in the resonant timbre of one well-versed in the traditions of Algonquin lore, set hearts aflutter and imaginations alight. Not alone in his astonishment, several other credible witnesses—including the taciturn Jean-Baptiste Dumont, who swears on his battered musket, and the inimitable old wanderer, Toussaint “Old Fog” Marceau—have observed this ghostly vessel gliding silently upon our lake, its paddles stirring the night as though performing an age-old rite.

I, too, sought the counsel of one Master Lambert, a scholar whose studies in the occult and metaphysics have made him a veritable oracle on the spectral denizens of our region. He confirms, with a wink and a scholarly nod, that the phantom canoe is no mere trick of errant moonlight, but an emissary from a bygone era—a vessel caught between the worlds of the living and the dead. “In such moments,” he opined, “the boundary between history and myth thins as the veil between this world and that mysterious beyond.”

Our evidence, you see, is as multifarious as it is compelling. It includes the riveting account of young Miss Eloise Marchand, whose startled observation of the spectral canoe amid a drift of autumnal fog has prompted even the staunchest skeptics to cast aside their doubts. Her vivid description, replete with phrases such as “a glimmering arc of silver in the obsidian night” and “an omen of eternal wanderings,” has, I dare say, inspired both shudders and smiles in equal measure among the townsfolk.

Even more curious is the local theory proposed by the venerable Mr. Ambrose Pelletier, a guide renowned for his cartographic eccentricities. He conjectures that an ancient subterranean channel—akin to the fabled passages of Jules Verne’s imaginings—might well serve as the conduit through which this ethereal canoe gains its mysterious ingress to our lake. Though his notion may stretch the bounds of conventional hydrology, it is a theory that carries the kind of delicious absurdity our community has come to cherish.

Now, dear reader, I invite you to suspend your disbelief, if only for a moment, and consider the cumulative weight of these observations. Might it be that Chateaugay Lake, steeped in history and haunted by the echoes of its own mysterious past, continues to nurture relics of a spectral nature? We cast down the gauntlet to every fresh-water sailor, every intrepid hunter of nocturnal wonders, and even to those scholarly souls from distant universities: come forth and disprove this claim, if you dare, for the evidence is as luminous as the moon’s silver path upon our waters.

Thus, as the mists of night once more rise over the lake and the phantom canoe reappears to trace its silent voyage beneath starlight, we are left to ponder the eternal interplay between myth and reality. And, if ever you find yourself wandering the wooded banks of our fair Chateaugay, listen closely for the soft whisper of paddles—a spectral reminder that in these haunted waters, the boundary between legend and truth is, indeed, as elusive as the very Spirit Guide at its helm.

Richard M. “Uncle Dick” Shutts
Adirondack Guide and Innkeeper of Indian Point Hotel