Archive for May, 2024
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART IX
HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART THE IX
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
As I sat there waiting, I felt a strange fear creep into my bones as the waves gently caressed the shore. All was quiet; most of the campers were fast asleep. Would anything happen? Of course not, that is the stuff of movies!
The moon illuminated the water’s surface. I was tired, drowsy and falling asleep when I noticed a peculiar glow in the water. “The legend is not a legend!” A glow rose from the murky depths, two red-hot coals just below the water’s surface. Next, the unimaginable. The surface of the water parted and what greeted my eyes was unspeakable. The figure appeared a mockery of the human form. And the eyes, they appeared as two suns. I wanted to look away but couldn’t. Suddenly jets of flame exploded from those orbs of doom and blinded me. Entered my eyes, my brain.
I felt pain; I felt …
* * *
A local newspaper published an article telling of campers killed at Lake Harmony. After four years, the incident was only a vague memory, until …
THE END
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR STORY, PART VIII
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
I could not believe that circumstances were putting me in the one place I felt evil that evil might lurk. How could I tell my wife we should not go because of a legend I read in an old book? I admonished myself, “Get a grip. Too much Stephen King.”
We arrived at our campsite. It was a beautiful June day, yet I greeted our arrival with apprehension. We were camping with friends who occupied site 35. The next morning promised to be a day of adventure.
After a breakfast of blueberry pancakes with berries picked from bushes growing on the edge of the lake, we went boating. The afternoon was spent hiking along a trail surrounded by mountain laurel in full bloom. It had been a truly wonderful day. After a campfire, we said good night to our friends as they went to their tent. It was late and time to turn in. I told my wife to take our two girls and get ready for bed, that I would watch the embers of our dying fire.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART VII
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
Out of curiosity and fear, I searched the internet when I returned home to see what areas of Pennsylvania the Lenape Indians had occupied, and if that area included the location of Lake Harmony State Park. The tribe had indeed lived in the area of the park. I also looked up the history of the park. The lake where we camped was man made. A dam was built to allow a lake to form. I remembered that, from our campsite at site 34 we could see two islands. Could those islands have once been the tops of hills? Could these be the hills that were once the home of The Ancients? Was it more than a legend? If these hills were indeed the home of The Ancients and the area had been flooded, then the tons of earth that trapped them would have eventually washed away.
I had these thoughts during the fall of 2001 and could not get the possibilities out of my mind. My mind considered powers unknown, evil unimagined. We were planning a camping trip to Lake Harmony the next year. My wife was to make the arrangements, and unknowingly, chose to camp on the four-year anniversary of the last unexplained event.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PARTVI
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
I carefully closed the book and felt a shiver as I recalled some newspaper accounts of horrible occurrences that happened at Lake Harmony remembering that they took place at four year intervals.
* * *
The latest incident occurred on June 12, 1998. A group of four friends came to the campsite where we enjoyed camping. Pitching their tent, they settled in for a few days of hiking and fishing. It was reported that they were to leave the morning of June 13. The morning of June 13 arrived and the surrounding campsites awoke to find that site 35 was empty. The men were gone, along with their belongings. They were never seen again. They had disappeared with no word to their family or friends. I remembered in the article about the fishermen, an earlier incident was mentioned of a horrifying occurrence that had never been solved.
It was June 12, 1994. A family of four, a mom, dad and two young sons were camping at site 34. On the morning of their departure, no one stirred. Finally, the time to vacate the site arrived and their tent was still standing with all their gear spread around the campsite. A ranger stopped at the campsite and called out, “Time to pack-up and leave”. There was no response. He shouted that he was opening the tent and did so. The poor fellow lost his mind with the sight that greeted him. The mother and boys were there, murdered and horribly mutilated. The father was gone and suspected of the crimes. He was never found.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART IV
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
Legend continued that one day Megwa, a young buck who wanted to prove his worth as a warrior, made a discovery that chilled him to the bone and sent the other warriors on a mission to destroy The Ancients. Megwa had a best friend with whom he shared his childhood. They would hunt together and talk about their future and their place in the tribe. His friend, whose name was Sharak, had suffered a grave misadventure as a young boy. Once their camp was attacked and Sharak, then a boy of six, ran from his shelter and was immediately clubbed by one of the invaders. He was thought dead, and placed among the bodies of his family and friends, but he soon stirred. The surviving tribe members nursed him back to health. He regained his strength, became a warrior, and went on to avenge the massacre of his parents killed by the invaders, but he always carried a reminder of that fateful attack. His forehead was indented with a deep crease that became a sign of his bravery and a reminder of his loss.
The time of the glowing eyes of The Ancients came once again and, again, four members of the tribe were missing. One of the missing Lenape natives was Sharak. Megwa felt a deep loss, an emptiness in his heart and a sorrow that would not leave. He grieved for his friend. He did not know where he had gone or what had happened to him.
Everyone knew that The Ancients must have been warriors in the past, for the entrance of their cave was adorned with skulls, the trophies of past battles. One day, not long after Sharak disappeared, Megwa was walking by The Ancients’ cave when he suddenly stopped and peered closely at the entrance. There among the other skulls was a new gleaming skull that he recognized, a skull with a deep gash in the forehead. He reported this discovery to the elders of the tribe and it was decided that The Ancients must be destroyed. The tribe knew they must wait until the eyes of The Ancients began to glow. That was when they were at their weakest, and feared contact with the outside world. With their eyes glowing like those of wild animals, they peered from their cave and would not venture beyond its entrance
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART V
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
Time went by, but Megwa never forgot his mission, his act of vengeance. One day a member of the tribe reported that the eyes of The Ancients had taken on the red glow. They knew the time would soon come, the special night. The night when the eyes of The Ancients would glow; glow as coals in the night. This was the night they could be destroyed. For once this night was over, they would regain new strength, new vigor as four more members of the tribe would be gone forever. As the eyes of The Ancients glowed their fiercest, the natives crept onto the hill above their cave, and with the earth already loosened from their previous night’s work, caused a deafening roar as the loosened earth cascaded down the hill and covered the entrance of the cave. The Ancients were never seen again.
As time passed, The Ancients’ story became legend. Yet there were times when eerie moans, like the earth itself was in pain, would come from the area of the two hills which the legend had described as the home of The Ancients. As time blurred the story of The Ancients, the haunting moans persisted; credited to the wind howling through the narrow valley between the two hills.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART III
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
The story began: there is a legend among the local natives of a group of men they called The Ancients. The Ancients were given this name because, when the first Lenape natives entered the land that would one day become Pennsylvania, The Ancients already inhabited one of the many caves in the area. No one knew their tribe or where they came from and The Ancients offered no information. They were wise old men possessing strange powers. There were four, all men.
The natives avoided their company out of fear and respect. They observed that The Ancients would age considerably over a four-year course. They noticed another curious aspect of their appearance: as they aged their eyes would redden. The Ancients’ eyes reddened to a point at which they would glow. As the visage of their age increased so, did the glow of their eyes, when a curious event would occur. Four members of the Lenape tribe would go missing. Coincidentally, The Ancients, suddenly shed the mantle of approaching death; their faces now appeared almost youthful.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART III
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
The story began: there is a legend among the local natives of a group of men they called The Ancients. The Ancients were given this name because, when the first Lenape natives entered the land that would one day become Pennsylvania, The Ancients already inhabited one of the many caves in the area. No one knew their tribe or where they came from, and The Ancients offered no information. They were wise old men possessing strange powers. There were four, all men.
The natives avoided their company out of fear and respect. They observed that The Ancients would age considerably over a four-year course. They noticed another curious aspect of their appearance: as they aged their eyes would redden. The Ancients’ eyes reddened to a point at which they would glow. As the visage of their age increased so, did the glow of their eyes, when a curious event would occur. Four members of the Lenape tribe would go missing. Coincidentally, The Ancients, suddenly shed the mantle of approaching death; their faces now appeared almost youthful.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART II
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
It began with an innocent trip to Baldwin’s Book Barn, a store which sold old and rare books. Baldwin’s was located in a rambling five-story barn. Set in the bucolic Pennsylvania countryside, it was my favorite haunt. I was in love with books, the older the better. I enjoyed breathing in the smell of old print and paper and wondered at the people who once owned these old tomes. My favorite time to visit was on a spring night when the customers were few. The store manager opened the barn doors to the surrounding fields, creating a natural setting for the store’s many books stacked in old orange crates. One pleasant spring night I parked in the gravel parking lot. I made my way up the rickety stairs, being sure to bend low so I wouldn’t tear my scalp on the low doorframes.
On the second floor, I walked past a door that was always locked, the door to the rare book room. A faint glow emanating from beneath the door had caught my attention, and then it was gone. My eyes traveled to the edge of the door. It was slightly ajar, a fact that had escaped my attention until that glow caught my eye. I entered and found beautiful leather bound volumes with gold leaf. I wandered among the shelves in the room filled with books I could never afford.
Off in a corner I noticed a slim volume on a table. The cover was leather with black letters; ‘Folklore of Pennsylvania and the Surrounding Area’. I knew some of the local myths, stories that made the tabloids or the local news when they had space to fill, such as the Jersey Devil rumored to inhabit the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. But this book appeared to be a serious and ancient text. With mounting curiosity I confronted the volume. A ribbon, marking a site of interest, peeked from the bottom of the book and upon being opened, the book yielded naturally to theses pages. With a mixture of awe and curiosity, I inspected the story of the Legend of the Ancients. I sat in a round-backed chair, and with curiosity, soon became lost in the book.
THE HAVEN OF HORROR: HORROR SHORT STORY, PART I
This story was published by Necrology Shorts in January 2010.
THE HORROR AT LAKE HARMONY
It was a quiet, lovely June night. The light of a crescent moon walked across the tranquil surface of the lake as waves lapped its shore. The air was filled with the smoke of campfires reaching skyward, as the smoke of many ancient fires did so many years ago. I sat quietly at this place where an unspeakable evil might exist. It was an evil that I stumbled upon. Or, maybe I was meant to confront the horror on this peaceful night. My thoughts led to the ultimate question. What if evil really exists as a tangible entity, able to be touched and looked in the eye?
Sitting on a picnic bench in camp site 34, with apprehension, I looked toward the lake for any sign of a glow. My wife, my daughters and I have camped here in the past. We have a particular fondness for campsite 34, a tree shaded campsite on the shore of the park lake. Although the tent site was somewhat small and gravelly, we endured the hard ground to enjoy the lake view.
But behind the joy was now a looming fear.
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