Homesteader Tracks Wails to Lake Washington's Haunted Spring
A lonely homesteader discovers the source of the eerie wails and mysterious shadows that had terrorized his cabin for thirty years.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It was a lonely homesteader in the spruce of the forest primeval which borders the classic Lake Washington from whom we learn the particulars of this 'o'er true tale.' 'Night after night,' said he, 'I had been startled by weird, uncanny wails, which seemed to proceed from the neighborhood of the 'Haunted Spring,' which, echoed with popular legends, was shunned with superstitious horror by the aborigines and only visited by the most adventurous of the pale-faces. Night after night my faithful watch-dog would slink into the cabin quivering with fear, as the faint wail shuddered through the startled air. I could bear it no longer, and shouldering my trusty rifle and leaving my faithful watch-dog whining piteously as he saw me depart for the unhallowed spot, I followed the serpentine trail which led to the 'Haunted Spring,' picking my way past fallen logs and rocky boulders by the smouldering moonbeam's faint light. As I neared the locality the wail rose sadly like the moaning of the wind through the somber pines. Not to the place entering which the lost at sea once have behind could be heard the frightful sound. Treading lightly, I stole unawares upon the scene of the hidden horror. Just then the light, hitherto partly veiled in mist, touched the forks of a willow, close to the turbid waters of the 'Haunted Spring.' I beheld a ghostly bottle that had sustained some 'cures.' It lay there by some agency. It would be an exaggeration of a divine gift, but with eye-daring I snatched one bottle from the S. O. Mill Co., Seattle, Washington Territory, which entirely rid me of the terrible threat that I had had for thirty years.
“Night after night my faithful watch-dog would slink into the cabin quivering with fear, as the faint wail shuddered through the startled air.”
This piece is a classic example of 19th-century 'advertorial' fiction, where patent medicine companies masqueraded as news reports to sell products. While the supernatural narrative is clearly fabricated for marketing, it provides a fascinating look at the pioneer mindset and the early commercialization of the wilderness surrounding Lake Washington.
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