Wicked Grim Stories

Canada, 1930s legend — a frozen camp, meals waiting, and a silence too heavy to melt. The dogs were dead, but the fires still smoked. In November 1930, a fur trapper named Joe Labelle snowshoed along the banks of Lake Anjikuni, deep in the Canadian wilderness near the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut. Labelle knew the…

Idaho Territory, 1880s — gold, dust, and a road that swallowed a coach whole. The coach was due by sundown. Silver City, Idaho Territory, was a boomtown in those days, its streets choked with miners, gamblers, and prospectors chasing veins of gold. The Owyhee Mountains rose jagged and red around it, and the only road…

Dayton, Ohio — a neighborhood of grand homes, forgotten dreams, and whispers in the dark. Five Oaks was once Dayton’s jewel. At the turn of the 20th century, the neighborhood was filled with tree-lined streets, elegant Victorian homes, and wealthy families who worked in the city’s booming factories. Horse-drawn carriages clattered over brick roads, and…

Atlantic Ocean, 1870s–1880s — two vessels, one vanished crew, and a history that smelled of salt and misfortune. The sea has a long memory. In 1872, sailors found the Mary Celeste drifting between Portugal and the Azores. Her sails flapped slack, her lifeboat was gone, and her crew — every man, woman, and child aboard…

Kansas, 1879 — a drought, a dry well, and a secret the earth held tight. They meant only to draw water. It was July of 1879, and the prairie town of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, lay parched under a brutal sun. Crops crisped in their rows, cattle bawled with thirst, and the wind carried grit that…