A collection of legends and tales around Mount St. Helens.
Collection contains oral accounts from survivors who witnessed the unknown, Native American legends, urban legends, newspaper articles, and first-hand eyewitness accounts from the mountain.
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I stand alone on the sandy shore of a dark-grey, aquatic smelling lake.
The wind howls like a pack of dire wolves as it passes beyond my ears; it dances in my hair and pushes me side to side like being on a boat tossed about upon the restless waves.
No forgiveness it gives as the rain-pellets against my skin, stinging my face as I look due south, looking at the low grey ominous clouds billowing with much ferocity against the surrounding walls of the lakeshore.
The steep topography of the landscape causes an acoustic effect as the wind blows, creating eerie screams and demonic moans all around me. I look upon a ghost of the lake's former self, looking at a site that was subjected to Armageddon nearly 30 years ago when hell literally boiled here, turning this lake into a froth of boiling cyanobacteria sludge and putrid sulfuric gasses.
Now, the Spirit-of-the-Lake haunts my eyes, casting its spell to hypnotize my senses as I become subject to the ancient legends that tell their stories one-by-one, like the waves against the white pumice shore.
My eyes skim across the wave-less waters, and then I see it!
A single wave formed off of Eagles Point and raced across the lake to Duck Bay and Truman's Island. I stand there in awe as hideous bear-fish bob their heads out of the water, looking at me for about thirty seconds and then slowly sink back under the surface without a noise.
Soon I hear rocks falling off of the surrounding walls of the steep wooden cliffs as if something was scampering up there. A horrifying scream then pierced my ears...the creature of the South Forest! It is coming!
The demons of the lake are coming for me...for my very soul!
***
In the past, legends tell of a time when this land was cursed by demonic forces that dwelled in the basaltic-andesite vertical cliffs just behind me - to the aquatic gothic creatures that lurked in the murky depths of the lake.
Locals also spoke of a distant time when the East Shore of the lake would consume visitors just after they were frantically chasing ghost waterfalls in the ancient forest, or being stocked by decaying corpuses of elks amongst the huckleberry shrubbery of the South Shore. Come to think about it, more death has happened here than anywhere else around this accursed lake.
Stories pour down like rain from tales of unexplained drownings by lake spirits called Bear-Fish—creatures with the body of a trout and the head of a bear.
Another creature that floats in this lake is a water swollen tree spirit named Old Man Willow that swims around the lake, snagging swimmers and pulling them down to the depths of the lake to drown them and claim their spirit: Hense the given name of the alpine lake - Spirit Lake.
