by C.G. Banks
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On May 22, 1929, according to the microfiche remnants from the old Angler’s Gazette, a man named Antonio Grasse, a recent Italian immigrant, was found dead in the woods near Asdlundt Lake. His fishing pole was found nearby, owing to the interest by the gazette, but not to the follow up stories that would continue by print and mouth for the next quarter century. The gazette laid it out in simple terms, bereft of histrionics. Grasse had spoke of fishing one afternoon, obviously had held true to his word, and even though the area in which he’d been found was far from the typical haunt of such types (angler’s are known for their quirks), no eyebrow was lifted to this irregularity. Initially. The odd thing, and here the paper only suggested, was how he was found: hooked by the pantsleg to the third strand of barbwire in the PetaCollins fence line, head down, his face resting in six inches of foul lake-runoff from the previous summer’s flood. Not a mark on his body, not even cuts from the barbwire, and yet his lungs full of the swampy water. Drowned somehow, hanging upside down from a barbwire fence. A damn sight strange indeed, but that’s where the Angler’s Gazette left it.
By the time of the first sighting the periodical had gone the way of the dinosaurs. And that was in 1939, April, just short of a decade later, when two teenagers, a boy and a girl, hysterically reported being dogged in the woods by “a ragged stranger.” More attention was paid on the fact that these two were together in the woods at all, but there was an interesting little side note in the story of a rare, old fishing lure found embedded in the boy’s torn shirt. And for some that brought back the memory of Grasse.
Over the course of the next fifteen years his ghost was spotted numerous times near the area, shadowing hunters and fisherman, occasionally getting close enough to become an actual menace according to those few who claimed these encounters. And then, very slowly, as the area became more notorious, the apparition slipped from the public conscience completely, or as completely as ghosts ever do.
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The 1940s passed with little more of substance to add to the public record. People, however, continued to talk. Hunting dogs, it was said, had difficulty following trails within Leszno’s Acres, and even if not, game taken was often deformed and distasteful. Camps would burn, lightning strikes from clear skies. Compasses would point errant directions. And then, the only real significant episode of the decade, the dead cows.