Once upon a time, the story goes, A local indian woman was raped and became pregnant. She later gave birth to a horribly disfigured and malformed child, and was so horrified by the sight of it, decided to discard it in the swamp. She paddled into the swamplands and left it in the hollow of a large tree.
The child survived, and grew up in the wild. For hundreds of years, the natives would not venture into the swamp alone, under any circumstances for fear of the man-like howls and cannibalistic nature of the beast.
During the War of 1812, Fort willow was stationed on the far side of the swamp. The only way in or out was down the river to Lake Huron. There were accounts of people disappearing in the swamp, even ones with broken ankles and legs misteriously missing from camp in the morning, without any missing weapons or provisions. Indian guides disbanded in groves, providing the reason that the spirits were waking.
Shortly after the war, a shop owner from the nearby town went partridge hunting. Shots were heard from the swamp, and screams, and he was never heard from again. A Trader from the North West Company wrote a memoir of his time in the swamp, detailing the howls and screams that he heard in a manuscript:
"into this foggy, forbidden marsh which in South America would have been populated with serpents and alligators, we descended, and near an abandoned storehouse, alighted our craft in a stagnant Creek, twenty feet broad and overhung with twisted shrubbery. We were not four hundred feet into the tortuous meanders when a drawn out screeching howl echoed through the mists, carried along by light winds, that raised the hairs on the back of our necks. It was not the sound of a coyote or screech owl that we heard that day..."
In the 1950s, a Charles Duckworth from Angus Ontario was on a fishing trip in the bottomlands forests, when he spotted the entity running through the forest. He took a picture which has been debated for authenticity. In 1979 the photo was tested for authenticity, which came up inconclusive.
In 1990, Catherine Hope of Ottawa caught a glimpse of the creature while snowshoeing across a midnight light fen in the swamplands. She called out to the creature, which turned and made route to the forests. After camping the night in a quinzee, she awoke in the morning (although the sleep was not that great) to find footprints all around the snowpile. She headed back for town and got the material to make casts of the prints, but by the time she had returned (with a few local villagers) the snowdrifts had eliminated the prints. She has never camped in the fens again!
In 1996 an accused poacher was climbing a tree attempting to steal heron eggs when he was struck on the back of the head with a large log. The accused was found with a large laceration to the skull and bruises along his ribs, in a pitiful state and clinging to an island of cattails in the flooded waters of the big marsh. He did not get a clear view of his attacker as the blood had blurred his vision, but he remembered the attacker whispering "
I protect all things in my home, leave us be.." before swimming away into the marsh.
TO LOG YOUR VISIT
Post a picture of yourself and your party at the above coordinates, or camping in the swamp. hehe.