There's a place on the great lakes called Lake of the Woods. Within it there is an area well known for strangeness. Although most won't talk about it with outsiders. It's called "The Devil's Gap".

Back then my Uncle and aunt owned a property closer to a famous landmark in the area. The devil rock. There's a few stories about how and why that rock got there. One is something to do with a group of "Satanists" trying to scare the natives out of the area. Others say it's older and something the natives warned us about. Either way it's a creepy out of place piece of rock the gets painted annually to ward off evil.

Anyway, one fall about a week before Halloween we went there to help get the lodge ready for wintering. My sister and I loved those times. That was until we got the bright idea to do a midnight hike to touch the stone. It was something we heard our older cousins did. A local rite of passage?

So there we were 5 and 7 respectively and as brave as two girls in fuzzy slippers could be. We stole a flash light and snacks, then made our way down the hill towards the hiking trail. We were about halfway down the path when an old Cree man stopped us.

"You red hairs shouldn't be out here. They like that color. They follow and take kids in the night."

This scared my sister so bad she ran all the way back to the lodge- with the flash light. I was left in the dark with this stranger. Oddly, I wasn't afraid of him, just curious.

"They who? Where will they take us? Can you take me to look at it? Pleeeease?"

He wouldn't take me. I still wanted to touch the stone. I never made it much further than where the man that stopped us. I had strange "dreams" for the rest of the week.

Foremost in my mind was the "dragon in a fur coat" that kept taping at my windows at night.