Louise Woods (Part One)

Here is the first part of Micah's Halloween story. Look for part two in the next couple of days. This is Micah's original story, with minor revisions on my part.

The Whitley family fall camping week is a special time for the children of the family. It has been an event that has occurred since Albert Whitley, the patriarch of the family, had begun the tradition in the early 1940’s when he brought his young wife and children on their first camping trip in the woods of northern Wisconsin.

The elder Whitleys had four children and by the late 1960’s, they began having their own children. The camping trips that started with only six people eventually ballooned to forty-two nearly 30 years after the tradition began. By 1971, Grandpa Whitley had bought a plot of land in the area that the family used for its annual fall camping trip. They now camped on 100 acres of land that included a boat dock, cabin, and even a crudely developed baseball field. Favorite family activities included cookouts, boating, fishing, softball games, and storytelling. But a new tradition started out of a tragedy that occurred in the fall of 1971.

The week was traipsing along quite well except for some unusual fall thunderstorms that swept through the area. One evening, after a particularly fierce storm trudged through bringing with it a wave of cool Canadian air, the entire family huddled around the crackling fire eating s’mores, drinking hot cider, and swapping scary stories. The campfire area had grown throughout the years to accommodate the growing family and was surrounded by dozens of old, overhanging trees that creaked spookily in the slightest of breezes.

Grandpa Whitley had just finished telling a story about an escaped patient from the state mental hospital. No matter what story Grandpa told, it always ended with a gruesome murder in the woods near the campsite. The kids ate it up, but it was the grown children that were still amazed at the creativity of their father. He had a real knack for developing new and exciting ways to essentially tell the same story.

As the story wrapped up with the body count in the woods higher than ever before, Jimmy, 12, and the oldest of the grandchildren spoke up. “Where’s grandma?” he asked.

Jimmy looked around. Grandma was nowhere to be seen. The other grandchildren who were old enough to be scared from the story began to cry and shout out after grandma. Kent, 11, and often seen as the daredevil of the group ran into the forest screaming for his grandmother. The others chased after him. After an exhaustive search that lasted all night, the park authorities were called in for a bigger search.

Nothing. No trace of Grandma Whitley. The official inquiry concluded that she had probably drown in the lake and that her remains would be found the next Spring after the thaw.

The next Spring came and went with no trace. Grandpa Whitley was heartbroken. He had no interest in continuing the tradition. He lost all interest in the family’s annual camping week. “It just wouldn’t be the same without your grandmother,” he said. He even contemplated selling the land and everything on it so he would never have to set foot up there again. How could a place that brought such joy now bring such tremendous sorrow?

Access road to Grandpa Whitley's plot of land.

The grandchildren petitioned Grandpa. The local grandchildren begged Grandpa to to keep the land at all costs. The distant grandchildren mailed letter after letter pleading with Grandpa Whitley to let them have the same experience that their parents had had growing up. Grandpa Whitley changed his mind and decided to keep the land. For the family. He decided that the family should, and would, return that fall. They would now hold a memorial service for Grandma Whitley every year and name the location “Louise Woods” after their beloved mother and grandmother.

The tradition continued for the next 33 years with growing families and even the addition of great-grandchildren. The numbers at Louise Woods grew into the hundreds some years with the addition of in-laws and extended family members. More cabins were built and even a few members of the family moved to the area permanently. Kent, the second oldest of the grandchildren and the growing outcast of the family, was the main architect and builder of all the new attractions at the camp site. The corner store in the nearby town Pocotah began depending on that time of year for a boost in business. They called it the Whitley family bump.

The family even started receiving state and local media coverage some years as fluff pieces for their stories and publications. The memories of how small it used to be faded as well as the memory that it was the sight of such a family tragedy. Even great-grandpa Whitley, with years of healing behind him, began to joke that grandma ran into the woods so that she would never have to return home. “Your great-grandma,” he’d tell the younger children, “well, she lives up here year-round. She just hides when we show up. She never much was for lots of noise.” The great-grandchildren get a kick out of that story, and often during the day they form Grandma-hunting parties and scour the woods to high adventure.

Despite the passage of time, the children and grandchildren always wondered what happened to their mother and grandmother that fateful fall in 1971. That mystery would soon be solved.