The Weeping Cabin

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. There was nothing but silence and a small flickering candle, the wax nearly spent.

Maybe the group of Camp Black kids who snuck away that night to see the Weeping Cabin didn’t notice the quiet as they drew near. Their hushed whispers and nervous laughter may have distracted them as they approached with nothing but a half-shuttered lantern to guide them. When they were close enough to see the candle and the ghostly shadows dancing in the dark, they might have thought someone in the group snuck ahead and placed it there to scare them. After all, the dark history always intrigued the kids who visited Camp Black.

According to legend, The Weeping Cabin had been a small shack and a meeting place between local settlers, and members of the Blackfoot Nation in the mid-1800s. The area was far enough away from any U.S. Military posts, both the Native Americans, and the aspiring settlers were well enough left alone. It was a small peaceful area, thick with game and forests, and all who lived and traded in the area enjoyed the tranquility this place had to offer.

All of that changed when Jessie Smith took permanent residence in the shack in 1852. He forced out the locals who had been dealing with the tribe for years, and took over the trading business, demanding more from all who did commerce. He expanded the shack into a true cabin, extended the grounds, built fortifications and walls, even hired a few men who were as crooked and rotten as Smith himself.

Tension was high, but the desire for peace was strong with the locals, so he was tolerated, and the unfair rates of trade were paid, until one day a young Blackfoot brother and sister were playing in the woods and came too close to the cabin. The men were drunk and abducted the children hoping to get a ransom. The whole tribe showed up for the exchange and were met by a force greater than their own, Smith and his men outgunning all who came on foot and horseback.

The father of the young children begged for their lives, but when Smith wasn’t satisfied with the offer, he slit the children’s throats.

Enraged, the Blackfoot tribe attacked. Despite their anger and ferocity they were nearly wiped out, unable to breach the walls and overtake Smith’s gang. Some did survive and escape, sending riders to the nearby tribes for help.

Gravely wounded and overcome with grief the father of the children swore revenge. On the second night after his children's brutal deaths, during a fever dream and while taking his last breaths, he offered himself to the Yee Naaldlooshii, The Skinwalker, and executed his revenge.

When the Blackfoot Nation arrived at the cabin, they were met by corpses. Torn and bloodied, it was a massacre, and kneeling unmoving in the center of the carnage was the father. But his eyes were dead and his fingers were claws. Instantly they knew what he had done, and many more died before they wounded the creature enough to burn its host and bind the father's tormented Skinwalker spirit to the cabin. And there it has remained, all those years, waiting to be released.

On some nights, when the moon is full and the air whispers secrets of the slain, you can see a candle, flickering in the depths of the woods, yearning to draw another soul to its domain.

This history pulled the young campers in and Camp Black, established in the early 1900's, did not disappoint. Swimming, hiking, archery, campfires, and Smores, it was everything a camper dreamed of. But dreams are a two-way street and can swiftly turn into a nightmare.

Even after the cabin mysteriously caught fire in the late 30’s there were still incidents. Campers would experience nightmares, some would report a strange glimmering light in the darkness of the woods, but no one was foolish enough to venture out at night, until that is, Lucy Grey, the only person to ever visit the cabin and live to tell the story.

It was the summer of '59, my grandmother, Lucy Grey, was fourteen years old. It was her first time at Camp Black and it was a dream come true. Her friends had been going for years, and it was all they talked about when school started. Stories of warm nights, exploring, crafting, bug swatting, swimming, and laughing. She was so happy to finally be experiencing it on her own.

A week had passed when Lucy found herself at a dwindling campfire, alone with one of the counselors who told her the true tale of the Weeping Cabin.

When she finally fell asleep that night, she saw the carnage. Behind closed eyes as she slept she smelled the blood and heard the cries of dying men.

She woke up screaming and was laughed at when the girls in her bunk realized she had never heard the story of the Weeping Cabin. They discounted the nightmare, but Lucy could not get it out of her head. As days passed, she forced the memory from her mind, filling it with swimming and smores. She had nearly forgotten about the horror when she was on her way back to bed after visiting the outhouse and saw a small pronounced light in the distance.

She ran toward her cabin thinking of the flame at the Weeping Cabin. A distant cry for help cut through the silence and stopped her in her tracks. She listened, then it was louder, a terrified scream, that of a little child.

Without thinking and discounting childish fantasies of a boogeyman in the woods, she sprinted to the call, fearing a young camper was in trouble. But no matter how far she ran, branches cutting at her face, she never got any closer.

“Help, Please!”

The voice called again, desperate. She was panting when she forced her way through a thicket of brambles and past a foggy veil, no longer scared of what was on the other side. From one breath to the next she found herself standing in front of the cabin, a candle burning in the window. Cautiously she crept closer. With every step the night grew darker, the trees closing in.

“Please, let me out of here... let me go!”

Behind the light there was a small girl, her dark eyes wide in terror. Lucy knew the girl needed her help, but if someone was being held captive, who had taken her? So many thoughts at once and they were silenced when hot breath pressed at the back of her neck. Trembling, she turned, finding a monster looming over her. It was skin and bones, Its back bent, its limbs too long, and its fingers too skinny and pointed. It smiled, the terrifying grin splitting its face from ear to ear.

“Please,” it said, the voice mimicking a small girl. “Help me!”

Lucy screamed and ran to the cabin. The creature laughed, the shrill volume piercing her ears and making her eyes water. She opened the door and slammed it behind her. Breathing heavily, she wiped the tears from her cheeks then froze, the fear inside holding her captive as a room full of dead eyes stared at her.

Bodies were everywhere, too many to count in the darkness. Some were standing, some headless, some dripping blood from body parts fading into nothingness. They all stood utterly still, peering with their dead eyes, right at her.

She could not scream, couldn’t run, even when the creature slammed against the door and knocked her to the ground, she was helpless to move. Without raising her head from the bloodied wooden floor, she could feel the spirits drifting closer, and smell the dirt and blood, and the rot from a hundred corpses. A hand fell on her shoulder, smoky tendrils drifting from the fingers.

“You must run.”

The voice was a thousand miles away but it shook Lucy from her stupor. She raised her head and met the gaze of the dark-eyed child from the window. Her skin was olive, and she wore beads and leather, a feather braided into her chestnut hair. Another child, standing behind her, his visage blending with the shadows, was close to her shoulder.

“Please” she said again, “You must run” she pointed to a large gap in the floorboards.

As if in a dream Lucy stood and made it to the gap, relieved to find it was a door. Lucy pulled it open as the front door to the cabin shattered and the creature burst inside. The spirits screamed in unison. Lucy’s vision blurred and she ran down the stairs. The creature was close, its long fingers reaching for her. To capture her. To keep her.

The room below was small and ended in an unfinished wall of dirt and rock, a small tunnel leading away. There was nowhere to go but forward and she dove for the opening, clawing, and crawling her way on.

The sweet kiss of night air met her nose and she fell from the tunnel. She stood, ready to run when a bony hand grabbed her and pulled her close. The creature was smiling, its teeth glistening in the moonlight. She tried to pull away, but its grip was impossible.

Its eyes blazed like a piercing flame. Lucy’s breath caught; her heart slowed. The longer she stared the more she felt herself fading away. Everything was nearly black when the creature's teeth wrapped around her neck, and she screamed. Unable to look away she tried to cover her eyes, but it was as if her hands were invisible. But they were not incorporeal. With the terror coursing through her veins, she barely felt her nails as they dug into her own eyes.

The camp found her the next morning, screaming and clawing at the sockets, blood running down her hands and staining the ground beneath. She never spoke again and lived the rest of her life blind and secluded in her house, but she, my grandmother, left me this account, scribbled in a binder after she gently passed in her sleep.

As for the kids that thought to visit the ghost of the Weeping Cabin, well, time has a way of repeating itself. The brave, young, and stupid Camp Black campers who passed through the veil and found the cabin with their lantern, were never seen again. No one knows what they were thinking, or what they did in their final hours. But everyone at Camp Black heard the screams, nestled deep within a nightmare shared by all who slumbered safe in their bunk houses. They all heard the cries of the children who perished at the Weeping Cabin.

When dawn fell over the Blackfoot Forest, and the search party stumbled upon the cabin, there was no sign anyone had been there. Cobwebs hung over dirty windows. Rusty nails held the boards in place over the doors. They nearly passed it altogether when someone noticed a candle in one of the windows, the faintest wisp of smoke coming from the blackened wick.

The authorities explained the disappearance as a tragic event. Young inexperienced kids getting lost in the vastness of Blackfoot woods, nothing more. But the people at Camp Black knew the truth, and so do I.