Advisory: For audiences drawn to cosmic uncertainty, inexplicable portals, and the madness of geometry in trees. May induce vertigo, déjà vu, or unease when glancing into wooded shadows thereafter.
Mose Sangamore’s Giant Tree Stand: A Portal to Other Worlds
Chateaugay Record, Week of July 2, 1887
“Something is rotten in the state of Lyon Mountain,” one could almost imagine Hamlet declaring were he to wander the moss-covered footpaths near Mose Sangamore’s famous tree stand. What was once a humble perch for local hunters to spy upon deer and raccoon now stands at the center of a mystery as strange as the darkest night on Chateaugay Lake. Once dismissed as the extravagant creation of a seasoned woodsman, the giant tree stand is now whispered about in hushed tones, its reputation growing as strange happenings multiply in the vicinity.
Local tales from the past week, collected with alarming speed by those brave enough to walk the woods at dusk, speak of inexplicable flashes of light—of lights, it is said, “as bright as the Aurora Borealis, yet coming from within the darkened trees.” More disconcerting, however, is the eerie gusts of cold air that strike without warning, as if an invisible force, not of this world, is breathing down the neck of any who dare to linger too long.
But it is what happened to a local woodsman—whose name, for the moment, we shall preserve for the sake of his livelihood—that has caused the greatest stir. This witness, who had ventured to inspect the tree stand for possible repairs, recounts with a peculiar mix of awe and dread, “I seen it—an opening, like a wound in the earth, right beneath the stand, so sudden, so unnatural. From it, a shadow—tall and thin, moving like it weren’t quite real—emerged. Not of man nor beast, but something in between. Something from the mists, but also from beyond them.”
Is Mose Sangamore’s craftsmanship of a tree stand merely a feat of lumberjack prowess, or is it an inadvertent construction of great cosmic consequence? Could it be, as whispered in the darker corners of Chateaugay Lake, that this very structure may be a gateway? A passageway to some far-flung corner of the universe, or perhaps to realms even more mysterious and fraught with danger? One can’t help but wonder if Sangamore, the ever-reticent figure who rarely shares more than the occasional grunt with passersby, may have unknowingly tapped into a primordial force far older than the woods themselves.
Professor Ezekiel Morel, a scholar in the arcane arts at the University of Vermont, was quick to lend his expertise to the growing debate. In a letter, now widely circulated among the more curious residents, he posits the theory that the stand may be situated atop a “long-forgotten node of powerful earth energies,” built by some ancient, and dare we say, otherworldly civilization. Such places of convergence, Morel suggests, have been known to serve as anchors between our world and others—connecting realms both known and unfathomable.
Yet, there are those in the community who do not share such elevated views. “It’s all nonsense,” Richard “Uncle Dick” Shutts, a local guide, scoffs over a cup of sour cider. “Mose just built it ‘cause he needed a good spot to watch the birds. It’s just folks’ imagination running wild, stirred up by too much moonshine and idle chatter.”
Nevertheless, the steady trickle of strange occurrences cannot be dismissed so easily. As the days go on, a growing number of travelers have been drawn to Lyon Mountain, many looking not for deer or raccoon, but for a glimpse of the mysterious lights, or perhaps to catch sight of that strange, shifting figure said to slip through the very fabric of reality.
Indeed, many who venture into the vicinity of the tree stand now report strange visions—some say the shadows stretch longer than is natural for twilight, others claim that the trees groan with an odd, unnatural reverberation, as though they were singing a song from a time before human memory.
It must be noted that there is no small amount of nervous laughter to accompany these reports. Some, no doubt, are simply letting their imaginations run away with them. After all, to believe in such outlandish things would make one appear either mad or perhaps as poetic as the distant tales of Jules Verne or H.P. Lovecraft, whose tales of otherworldly places are more fiction than fact.
But then again, is it not said that truth often wears the guise of a fool? Perhaps Mose Sangamore, whose only ambition has been to carve out a life amongst the trees, has unknowingly created a link between this world and another.
Until more is known, and indeed until someone daring enough enters the rift beneath the tree stand to seek answers, we are left with the tantalizing mystery of Mose Sangamore’s Giant Tree Stand—where the boundary between our world and the unknown may be thinner than we ever imagined.
We, dear reader, shall wait with bated breath.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?