Ray's Corner

Fishing at Echo Canyon

"...I left school when I was 12 and I went out to work when I was 12 years old. I worked for about a year in the mills and then I went in the woods and I worked in the woods and I came home the next spring. Well, the summer I was 14 why we had an old canoe there and there was a brook that went up to this bog and I used to like fishing. So one day I said I was going up the brook fishing. Well, there was a place up to the head of the brook it was called Echo Canyon. It was just a big cliff that come down between...these two sides came down and met in the middle and there was a brook that run down through and if you hollered when you was up there you could hear your echo going up this canyon - we called it Echo Canyon but it didn't have any name. There was a lot of fish in there, it was a great place to fish; well ,down on the meadow below it why there was lots of fish but up in the canyon where people didn't go fishing why the fish was bigger and there was pools and runs. So anyway, I'd heard them talking - I was only a kid - and I'd heard them talking about these three men who had gone up there fishing and had never heard tell of afterwards. So, I said well, now when I get big enough I'm going up there and see what's up there. So this time I was 14 and I had this old canoe and I said I was going up the meadow for fishing. So my father said, 'Don't you go up any further than the head of the meadow'. Now he said, 'You pay attention to what I tell you you go up as far as the the head of that meadow and then you turn around and you stay away from that canyon'.

So I went up that day and oh going up that meadow I caught, I don't know, 12, 14, 16 trout and they was about 8, 9, 10 inches. And when I got up to the head of the meadow where the canyon stopped and came out on the meadow I looked up at the pools - there was a pool up there about 100 yards - I saw these trout jumping and they was nice trout so I said gosh I'm going up to that first pool and catch some of these trout. So, I went up to the pool and I fished and I caught, I think, eight and they was good trout about 13-14 inches long. And I said I got enough and I'll go back. So I went back down out of the pool and when I got back down to the head of the meadow I said I guess I'll go ashore and eat my lunch. So I drove the canoe ashore and I got out and I sat down by a fir tree, oh about 8-10 feet away from the canoe, and I headed back up against this fir tree and I ate my lunch. I was sitting there, it was a nice sunny day and quiet, no wind a blowing and I was sitting there and all at once I heard something walking behind me. Well, I said that's a moose, the way its walking I can tell its a moose. So I went to work and kind of looked back over my shoulder right and left and I didn't see any moose. I said well it's a moose, because it's not a deer it's walking too slow and the steps are too far apart. You could hear this "Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!". So I said that's a moose, its gotta be. It kept getting closer and after a minute or so I said why them steps should be close enough that I can see that moose. So I turned around and looked over in the softwood and hardwood and I didn't see any moose. And I didn't see any deer or nothing and I knew it wasn't a bear because you can't hear a bear walking in the woods and a deer takes shorter steps. I said now what would that be? So I set down again the fir, and I could still here it coming closer, and by and by it come to me about what they said about those three people missing and that place was haunted and I said to myself, "My heavens, that a ghost!"

Well, I got scared so I didn't move, I just set there and looked out over the bog. I could hear the steps coming closer and closer and they was getting right up close to me and I couldn't move, I just froze right there. By and by I felt this great big cold hand, oh its fingers seemed to be about a  foot long and his hand just as cold as ice. He grabbed me by the back of the neck and picked me right up - I'd weigh then, oh 90 pounds probably - and picked me up and slapped me right down in the canoe, just walked over and slapped me down in the back seat of the canoe, and he give the canoe a push down the river and said 'Don't come back!'.

Well sir, I grabbed that paddle and I went down that brook right out straight and from that day to this I've never been to that place, or I never told my brothers about it till years later and I never told my father and mother because I knew I'd get a lickin' But I didn't bother to go back there again because he told me not to come back and I said to myself, 'Well, I guess I wont bother to go back!'..."