A Homesteader Tracks Wailing to Haunted Spring
A terrified settler stalks a supernatural wailing in the woods near Lake Washington, only to find the culprit is far more mundane.
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 deep recesses of the forest primeval which borders the classic Lake Washington from whom we obtained the particulars of this 'o'er true tale.' 'Night after night,' said he, 'I had been startled by a weird, uncanny wailing, which seemed to proceed from the neighborhood of the Haunted Spring, which, edged with poplars pale, is shunned with superstitious horror by the aborigine and rarely visited by the most adventurous of the pale faces. Night after night my faithful sotbe slunk into the cabin quivering with fear, as the dissonant wail shuddered through the startled air. I could bear it no longer, and shouldering my trusty rifle and hearing my faithful watchdog 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 over fallen log and rocky boulder "by the struggling moonbeam's misty light." As I neared the locality the mournful cadence of the mysterious sound rose fitfully above the soughing of the wind through the somber pines. Not in the place entering which the lost wretch leaves hope behind could be heard a more frightful sound. Treading lightly, I stole unawares upon the source of the hidden horror. Just then the moon, hitherto partly veiled in clouds, shone out in unclouded brilliancy, and there in the forks of a willow, close to the turbid waters of the Haunted Spring, I beheld an empty bottle that had once contained Swamp Angel's Rheumatic Cure... left there by some one, unmindful that it would be to me a divine message of a divine gift.'
“Night after night my faithful sotbe slunk into the cabin quivering with fear, as the dissonant wail shuddered through the startled air.”
In the 1880s, 'patent medicines' like the fictionalized Swamp Angel’s Rheumatic Cure were a massive industry, often using elaborate stories of 'haunted' locations or medical miracles in their advertisements. Today, this kind of native advertising has simply evolved into sophisticated digital 'sponsored content' and influencer marketing, still preying on the same human desire for a quick, miraculous fix to everyday ailments.
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