THE LEGEND OF THE SAWMILL

 

The Fog of Widow’s Landing

They say the dead don’t stay buried in Widow’s Landing. Long before roads were paved and tourists enjoyed lakefront views, this stretch of Covington was little more than an isolated fishing camp tucked along the dark, unforgiving waters of the Tchefuncte.

For generations, locals whispered about the things that lived beneath the lake:

• The River Pirates: Smugglers executed along the shoreline, whose phantom hulls still creak when the mist rolls in tight.

• The Ghost Ship: A Confederate hospital ship, heavy with dying soldiers, that vanished into an unnatural fog during the Civil War.

• The Black Coffin: A monstrous artifact hauled from the deep by a doomed fisherman, unlocking something that should have remained buried forever.

When the thick, suffocating fog rolls across the river, it moves with a mind of its own. It smothers lantern light, kills sound, and ushers in the wet footsteps of drowned men dragging themselves ashore.

A Town Harvested

Widow’s Landing is cursed, forgotten by time, abandoned by sanity. First, the lighthouse keeper vanished. Then the cemetery itself rotted. The caretakers charged with tending the dead stopped aging properly—their skin tightening over bone, their voices sounding like dry earth shifting over a coffin lid. Why?

The River Pirates cruised the lake and rivers long before the nation was divided. They were plagued with fear and death, a curse whose source was discovered by a cunning captain. The Old Master was captured with Voodoo Spells and Black Magic, trapping this entity in what became its prison for over 100 years, The Black Coffin.

The Ghost Ship… During the bloody chaos of the Civil War, Widow’s Landing and Lake Pontchartrain became desperate breeding grounds for Confederate warships and smuggling. When New Orleans fell in April 1862, retreating forces fled up the dark waters of the Tchefuncte River. Among these doomed ships was the CSM Lady Red, a massive steamer that plunged into the watery abyss in October 1862—dragging everyone on board down to a watery grave. Local legend claims these waters are haunted by this “medical ship,” but the truth is far more sinister. The sunken husk was actually heavily armed gunboat, drowned forever with the trapped screams of dying surgeons and butchered soldiers whose ghosts still guard the river today. The ship was raised to put it back into service by Union forces, unknowingly releasing The Black Coffin to rise from it’s watery prison.

The Lighthouse at Widow’s Landing was meant to guide the boats through the fog. Instead, it became a warning. Some say the light does not shine to lead travelers home, but to call them closer. On stormy nights, a glowing pale woman in silk is said to appear at the top of the tower, her dress whipping in the wind as she looks out over the river. They call her the Silk Lady.

The old stories say she was a young woman riding along the river road when her horse reared in terror as it was startled by some creature in the night. She was thrown into the marsh-dark below, breaking her neck, and died before help could reach her. Since then, her spirit has been seen high above Widow’s Landing, watching the water, waiting in the fog. And when the night is right, her scream tears across the river like a banshee… a warning to anyone foolish enough to follow the light.

But the Silk Lady is not the only thing that haunts Widow’s Landing.

The Old Cemetery grew restless. The caretaker and his family began to hear scratching beneath the floorboards. The gravedigger found coffins split from the inside. The dead no longer stayed where they were buried. Some blamed the river. Some blamed the lighthouse. Others spoke of something older beneath the mud — something with wings, teeth, and a hunger that reached back to the beginning of fear itself.

Even the heartbeat of the camp, Widow’s Landing Cannery, became a slaughterhouse of hooks, rusted blades, and fishermen who refused to die. The locals finally realized a horrifying truth: Their great lighthouse was never meant to keep danger away. It was guiding prey home.

“Widow’s Landing was never haunted. It was harvested.”

The Ancient Hunger: Old Leatherwing

The curse didn’t come from the lake. The truth lies deeper, past the village, in the bowels of the mill.

Deep beneath the mill rests an ancient Mesoamerican deity forgotten by time, but preserved in half-rotten journals: Camazotz, the winged bat-god of death. To the locals, he is known simply as The Master, Old Leatherwing.

Neither wholly beast nor wholly man, Old Leatherwing is a hunger with teeth. It has nested in these marshes for centuries in The Black Coffin that was brought ashore from the deep decades earlier, feeding on trappers, runaways, and the lost. But when the sawmill was built directly over his nest of underground ancient ruins, the machinery became his ultimate tool. Old Leatherwing is a force of nature, turning it’s prey into it’s undead vampiric servants while feeding on the mill’s never ending supply of blood.

The Mill is Alive

The SAWMILL was never a mill of lumber… It’s a MEAT PROCESSING PLANT to HARVEST BLOOD! Fear intensifies the taste of the harvest for The Master. Decades of processing animal carcasses and human flesh alike have stained the very fabric of the building. Soaked in generations of fear, blood and misery, the wood now groans like flesh. The walls breathe. They trap souls. And the saw blades hunger on their own.

The Sawmill has awakened, and Old Leatherwing’s feral brood is ready to feed.

IF THE DEAD DON’T GET YOU… THE SAWMILL WILL!!!