This is a strange land upon which you stand. It’s a place where the spirits of the other world, and the shadows of the past walk hand and hand.
Long ago, when these woods were inhabited by the Cherokee and Osage Indians, they noticed that the two rivers that surround this place were magical. The power of the flowing water was just strong enough to hold spirits to earth preventing them from crossing over to the other side.
One morning, a young Osage woman came down to the river to bathe her child. Slipping on the bank, she dropped the child into the water. She grabbed for her son, but the mud was too slick. He fell into the river, and the flowing tide pools took him under never to be seen again. The boy was gone…or was he?
There was a new presence in the forest, a dark spirit. While hunting this land, the tribes started seeing a wild being…a black shadow that ran through the forest. It was a mythical creature that came out of the darkest realms of the earth and nether world. The Choctaw called it Ishatahulla or Shilup. The Cherokee called it Winago. Some even throught it to be the legendary Rugaru.
It was eating their game, and destroying their hunting grounds. The men searched for it, but it could never be found. People and animals disappeared…only later to be found slaughtered. Their carcasses would be tossed in trees or on the river banks, with nothing left but their bones sucked dry.
When oil was discovered, a boom town soon arose on the land. Men and machines foreign to the Indians took over. In their vanity, the oil men didn’t listen to the warnings the tribal elders gave them, and they tore through the grounds. It wasn’t long before the oil workers told of a woodland creature, one that sometimes would rise out of the pools of oil. It had tentacles, and long teeth dripping with swamp ooze. It’s arms were as long as a man stood tall, and it breathed through gills.
The hunting villages are gone into history and the oil fields have dried up, but the Indians in the area know that the creature lives on. Beware while you venture about tonight. If you feel a slimy tentacle reach for you, or a claw clamp onto your neck, hope that the beast takes mercy and you go quick.