On March 21, 1887, all 500 residents of a small town in northern Ontario suddenly disappeared.
Established 4 years prior in 1883, Midcopse Creek was a logging settlement that supplied lumber to every urban center north of Ottawa. An isolated town, three hours from its nearest neighbor, the anomaly in Midcopse went unnoticed for two days until on March 23, a lumber shipment bound for Sudbury never arrived. Concern grew, and a small investigative party, consisting of one reporter, Aaron Hill, and one police constable, Robert Summers, dispatched to Midcopse Creek by horse and buggy. Aaron Hill kept detailed records of their disturbing journey to the isolated outpost.
1 hour before arriving in Midcopse, Aaron noted that there was something ‘uncanny about the verdure of the path.’ – that is, the dirt road from Sudbury to Midcopse was lined with the tall, looming trees of an old growth boreal forest. This was strange, because it was only three years prior that this neck of the wood had been razed. The clearcutting had been thorough, and the only trees that should have been in the area were saplings and new growth. “The aspens quaking boughs hang high over our heads as if to cut us off from the sun,” Aaron journaled, “Our way is darkened by all manner of trees that could not be a year younger than 50. The silver bark of the birches and poplars is pristine, untouched by any animal. There is something unnatural in the way their trunks reject the fleeting light. I feel that I can nearly see my own reflection in the bark. Behind them, in rows along the road, the bark of the Jackpines and Fir trees appear as pitch. I feel that I may go mad if I should gaze too long upon them. They sit in an unearthly shroud, seeming to pluck the light from the air around them. We must be diligent, for I fear the worst for the people of Midcopse. The wood appears only to deepen as we continue our venture into this tunnel, its making the horses uneasy.”
The search party was in awe of what had become of Midcopse. The trees surrounding and within it had grown to 100 feet tall, and only faint beams of light made it through the canopy above to bathe the town in a dim green aura. Robert remarked at how quiet it was - no animals could be seen climbing the trees, and no bird could be heard chirping. The trees had formed a dome over the clearing around Midcopse that the wind could not penetrate. Even the creek that ran through the center of the town had nearly run dry, and was unable to babble. In the haunting silence of that first moment in town, Aaron noticed the pollen. It hung all throughout and above the town making it as though they were inside a snapshot of a snow globe. The particles were most visibly dense near the trees. But it was too early in the spring for pollen. Aaron noted that high up on many of their trunks were strange pink flowers in full bloom. Every species of tree surrounding the town had one. Later in the evening, Aaron wrote his initial impressions of the deserted town. “*As we tread softly toward the well at the center of Midcopse, it feels as though we are moving through a place that time doesn’t flow. The pollen, though visible, has so little mass that it resists its earthly bondage, but if you stop and watch it long enough, you can see it slowly falling. I have never seen a flower like the one producing it. It is close to those I saw during my year in the Amazon, but I believe it is even larger. Perhaps it is an invasive species, symbiotically attaching itself to each of the trees, perhaps it helped them reach their current stature? It has no scent, and no taste. I pray it does us no ill, as surely all this time we have been breathing it in.
All the little houses in the village stir empty in their russet hues. The people of Midcopse have left them behind without prompt. The forests surrounding are vast, and it is not evident that a logging business ever operated here. Without the sign declaring the town’s name over the well, we would not have been certain we arrived in the right place. There is no sign of conflict, and as we passed between each small dwelling I noticed the wood of their construction is pristine, like the bark of the trees. No windows are boarded, and nothing inside them looks disorderly. The layer of pollen coats everything even inside the homes however, the beds, the couches, the insides of their wood stoves. It seems it permeates everything in Midcopse. Perhaps this was their reason for leaving? But why so suddenly? Leaving all their belongings behind? And where would they have gone? They never made it to Sudbury.
Robert and I are bunking in one of the vacant homes tonight. Tomorrow at first light, we will check through their belongings for an indication of the nature of this exodus. After that, we will do a brief investigation of the forests surrounding the town, and return to Sudbury. I wish to leave as soon as our duty is fulfilled, a heaviness in the silence here weighs on the soul. It feels as though the air wishes to pull me into the earth. May God deliver us from evil.*”
In the morning, Robert discovered that the horses had fled, somehow undoing their bindings to the well where they had been tied. The search party had an argument about whether to continue or end the search. But they still had enough supplies in the buggy to last. No stone was left unturned within the houses as they flipped through logging ledgers and invoices, and it was not until the third house was searched that Aaron discovered a notebook of interest. It was a journal left by a woman named Marie Brant that appeared to document a buildup of strange occurrences in Midcopse over the past 6 months. The notebook’s first entry was dated September 19, 1886, “The spruce saplings I planted in the spring have sprouted up enormously this week.” She titled the entry. “We left so few trees standing around Midcopse that I’d started to miss them. I often thought of the charming firs that surrounded by girlhood home and wished for young Ferdinand and Grace to grow up with a bit of respite from industry. So in June, I replanted a few spruce saplings I found in the Eastern Wood. All summer, I watched them grow from my foot to the height of my boot, but after spending a week at the Eastern Mill, I returned to Midcopse to find them at head height. I am sure my children will start climbing them soon, but I am not without concern. Never in my years have I seen trees grow in such a mighty spurt.” The notebook entry continued, but the pen smudged and was illegible.
The next entry came not a month later, on October 14, 1886. “A small forest of new growth has taken root around Midcopse Creek. The saplings I planted in June now loom over our village. They appear large even for adult trees, and they shed a heavy pollen even though winter will shortly be upon us. My youngest, Grace, won’t go near them. She tells me she’s afraid of them, but when asked why she only tells me its because they whisper to her. My oldest, Ferdinand, has not been himself of late. He is lethargic, wants to lay in bed all day. My husband, Frederick, yells at him and tries to whip him into shape. The discipline was working at first, but in the last few days, Ferdinand seems to have lost the sense of fear and respect for his father. He takes his beatings silently, and begrudgingly makes his way out to the mill on his own time. This morning, as he lay in bed, I sat at his side and asked him ‘Ferdinand, have the trees whispered to you too?’ and for a moment I could see a flame of acknowledgement light from behind his eyes. But moments later that inkling of his former self was swallowed by whatever has a hold of him. I pray that it is an illness that will pass, and I have asked Frederick to stop his beatings. I pray for Midcopse, for I feel that evil is upon us.”
Not two days later, Marie had left another note left hastily scrawled in the margin of the page. “October 16, 1886. Evil is indeed upon us. There was an incident at the Eastern Mill yesterday. Michael Lambert, a hardworking lumberjack and a close friend of Frederick, has gone mad. He went North of the Mill to a birch grove and returned an hour later with no clothing. He was brandishing his axe. Frederick tried to calm him but he was in a blind rage, screaming until red in the face, telling everyone to stop killing the trees. The foreman told him to go home, and get some rest, and he flew into a rage. He cut down the Jackson’s son with his axe and swung at Frederick, carving up his chest and wounding him. The other men retaliated, cutting Michael down shortly after. Frederick was beside himself when he returned home. I helped patch him up, but I could still feel his silent weeping as I lay next to him at night. Many think he contracted rabies, but I believe this is connected to the trees… somehow… if only I knew how… Michael had been a lumberjack his whole life, to suddenly throw it away for the trees is unthinkable.”
November 29, 1886.
“*We awoke this morning to find Ferdinand missing. Gone from his cot. His condition had only worsened in the last months. He seldom left his bed, and the few times he did he just stared into space. When I tried to get his attention I could tell he was only looking through me. We braced for the inevitable, for a morning to come when we woke up to him dead. But this is an outcome I never imagined. While Frederick went about the town, asking if anyone had seen him, I questioned Grace. I believe she has an intuitive understanding of the evil that grips us, but she is too young to articulate it. My blood froze as she told me the trees took Ferdinand. For a moment, I lost my composure. I took up an axe, and went behind the house. To those three spruces that now stand at thrice the height of normal trees. I hacked away at them in a blind rage, screaming at the top of my lungs, asking what they did to my son. Frederick ran over to stop me, and ushered me back inside, where I just hugged Grace for hours. The Smiths told Frederick their eldest son, John seemed to be coming down with the same lethargy our Ferdinand was plagued with.
This evening, as the sun set I gazed out the back window at the trunks of the wicked trees that in the afternoon I tried to fell. Their sap had spilled out where I cut into them. It was Venetian red. A red-brown that looked very much like dried blood. Perhaps its nothing. Perhaps I’m simply losing my mind. I just wish for Ferdinand’s safe return.*”
January 4, 1887.
“*Midcopse Creek has not seen light in 2 weeks. We sit in the heart of an impossible boreal forest. Miscreations of monstrous trees have suffocated us in a dome of leaves and needles so thick that the snowfall can not breach them. These are no trees. These are demons. That is what I believe. No trees grow this tall, or produce leaves when the ground is this frigid. Their roots wrap under our house, lifting it off its foundation. They found their way to the well water in the center of our town and sucked it dry. The forest has done the same with our Creek. I have begged Frederick to round up some boys and rid ourselves of this forest, but there is always some excuse as to why he cannot. I have noticed his mind slipping. Periods of brain fog where he cannot remember his name, or what he sought out to do. He is becoming demented. I saw it in my mother near the end, but he is half her age. He is not alone however, I have seen these symptoms in other townsfolk. Production in the Eastern Mill has slowed, this brain fog is affecting all of our daily routines.
In the absence of snowfall, a strange pollen wafts over Midcopse. A queer pink flower populates the wood, spreading the stuff. I wonder if it is the vehicle of our waking nightmare, or just another vision in our slumbering. I want to take my family and go far away from here, but neither Grace nor Frederick is willing. I awoke some nights ago to a soft voice in the other room, and for a moment, my heart skipped, thinking Ferdinand had returned. I crept into the doorway to see my sweet Gracie leaning on the windowsill, face pressed against the glass. I was alarmed to find her talking to someone outside our house at the witching hour, but I stopped myself from prying. ‘Will you ever bring them back?’ I heard her little voice ask. There was no audible response, but Grace started weeping. Somehow, an instant later, she became aware of my presence, and crawled back into bed.
I thought I was growing numb to these horrific occurrences, but last night I saw something so unnatural that I was made to feel ill. I awoke to a commotion, shouting outside in the center of town. Frederick and I made our way outside and through the pollen we saw the Smith’s eldest son, John, making his way toward the well. His parents followed him out and pulled him back inside their home, but moments later, the young man had muscled his way through them again, determined to get to the center of town. Distraught and exhausted, the Smiths watched from the doorway as he made his way out to the well. He stopped, expressionless, in the dirt a few feet from the well, and as the whole town looked on, he simply lay faced down with his arms at his sides, nose pressed straight into the frozen soil. His mother wailed, beside herself and unable to speak, but when I asked the boy’s father about it, I learned that he had been doing this for hours, without ever seeming to tire. It had been two months of hardship, since John’s lethargy began, and this appeared to be its conclusion. Utter madness. I tried to round up the townsfolk to help the Smiths, aiming to help them get him back inside, but all seemed disinterested. Emotionless. Each closed the door in my face. John’s mother, Lydia, brought blankets out and wrapped them around John, and sat with him in the cold, sobbing for much of the night, and in the morning they had both disappeared. Vanished without a trace, blankets and all. Jack Smith, husband and father to Lydia and John, was found dead in his home later this morning, after gutting himself with his own axe. I find it hard to judge him, and pray that God has mercy upon his soul.
I can’t help but wonder if this was the fate of my Ferdinand. Did he wander off somewhere to be eaten? Or so weary of lethargy, did he simply lie down to die?*”
The last entry in Marie Brant’s notebook was dated March 23, 1887, the morning of the day the search party arrived, and Aaron trembled as he read it aloud.
“*All is lost. My Daughter is gone. This foul winter took everything from me. I watched the demise of the people of Midcopse. One by one they slinked to the center of town in darkness, only to be gone by morning. On February 28, it was my husband’s turn, I felt little, as I had anticipated it for a while. The week before his disappearance he woke me often, sleepwalking. Frederick would climb out of our cot, then turn, standing to face me. I could see only the whites of his eyes and the broad smile he wore on his face as he taunted me. Each time he spoke he repeated an iteration of a single message; he told me that the trees would grow big and strong and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The first time it happened, I cried in terror, but shortly after, I realized he was already dead. The trees were only speaking through him. They are angered by my presence, as it seems for whatever reason I am immune to their charms. I didn’t bother to get out of bed on the 28th as I heard the door to our house open, but I at least watched my husband go. He paused in the doorway and whispered one final, “Goodbye, Marie,” and the door closed. I don’t know whether that was also the work of the trees, or if one last glimmer of the man I loved poked through the clouds over his mind.
Last night, it was Grace’s turn. We were the last two in the village, and it had become apparent that she was special, like me. She was the first to hear the whispers of the trees all those months ago, but she never developed the brain fog. Two nights ago, as I cooked her a stew she told me she was ‘chosen’ by them for some ‘higher purpose.’ I begged her not to listen to them, to pack her things, to get out of Midcopse but she confidently told me the trees would never allow us to leave. She told me that if she helped them, they would allow me to leave and start a new life somewhere else. I told her I would rather die than abandon her.
The door opened this morning and I jolted out of bed to see my only daughter running North-East into the woods. I followed behind her, calling and screaming for her to return. The woods seemed to change around me as it to swallow her, and keep us apart. If anyone is reading this now, please know that I went North East, to the Eastern Mill to search for my little Grace. There is something suspect about that part of the Woods. I believe it is the origin of these sentient trees. It was the last part of these woods left untouched by loggers, for reasons that I now think are beyond coincidence. It is where the first man went mad, and it is where I transplanted the spruces that now sit behind my house. If you read this any time after March 25th, 1887, assume I am dead, and by all that is holy burn this cursed forest to the ground.*”
As Aaron read the last words, Robert looked uneasy out the back window, at the looming spruce trees planted so close to the small hut. He lingered a final moment before finally stating “We’d better get going.”
And so they made their way through town and into the Eastern wood. Aaron tried feebly to cover his mouth and nose so as not to breathe the pollen in, although he knew it was likely of little use. The gargantuan trees packed so closely together at the edge of town that the forest floor they walked across was primarily exposed roots. The trees seemed to bend and sway in the windless woods, as if to pull them off course. Robert ensured they travelled due east with his compass, although they didn’t know where exactly the Eastern Mill was.
“*When after one half of one hour I saw in the corner of my eye a tree that was growing sideways.” Aaron wrote. “I knew it could only be a cross-beam of a man made structure. The trees of the wicked wood were bending so as to try to conceal it. The roots beneath our feet trembled as we ran over them, but we did not waver. Forcing our way through the trees we came upon the old Eastern pulp mill, overrun with vines and pink blooms. The pollen fell there just as it did in Midcopse. Our eyes were immediately drawn to the smallest tree we had seen in days. A sapling about 8 feet tall. It sat near the steps to the mill, and a woman’s clothing appeared to be hanging from it. Robert marched up to investigate first, and I followed close behind. When he stopped I nearly bumped into him. A young woman stood before us, convulsing, her right eye fighting to observe us as she struggled to survive. A sapling had grown through her. Torn right through her leather slipper and up through the skin of her heel, shot through her torso and continued through her mouth. She was trying to communicate, but all we could hear were muffled, guttural noises. The tree was not done growing; its exposed roots pulled her a little higher into the air every few seconds. Robert scrambled to his senses, he rushed to the ground and with a knife tried to cut away at the small tree and I to where her eye could observe me. ‘Please blink for me if you are Marie?’ I asked, fishing for the right questions to ask in what precious time remained. She blinked. ‘Ok, thank you, and were you able to find Grace?’ I pressed on, as she climbed higher into the air.
The woman’s eye remained open, steadfast, as her eyelid twitched. Finally, it rolled back in her head and an agonized, muffled scream heralded her end. There was a hard pop and crack and blood began flowing out her clothes and down onto the soil. Robert was beside himself. Cursing the heavens as Marie was carried up into them. In frustration, and without another word to me, he made off into the forest North of the mill. I didn’t follow as I assumed he would not go far. Gazing up to the top of the massive tree before me, I could see by the absence of light in the woman’s eyes that Marie was gone. I was in shock. I still am. It took me a moment to think of where I was and what I was supposed to be doing, and I wandered the grounds of the pulp mill, in search of Grace. I called out to her but could hear no reply in the silent wood. Every so often I gazed back up at Marie, I don’t know why. Perhaps I was still trying to confirm that she had been real. After an hour of desultory searching, I realized Robert was not going to return. A chill crept into the air, and the glow of light through the treetops was fading. I made my way back to Midcopse through a quieted wood. I could not understand why I was not already dead.
‘Aaron!’ I heard Robert’s call from one of the huts. He stood in the doorway with a look of urgency on his face. It pulled me out of my stupor and I rushed over to him. He ushered me inside and I took a seat at the small dining table as Robert closed the door behind us.
‘What is it? Did you find Grace? Did you learn anything?’
Robert turned and looked at me, a glazed look in his eyes.
‘What is it Robert? What’s going on?’
Robert said nothing, one of his eyelids closed, and opened before the other, and he continued his vacuous stare. I rose to my feet.
‘What are you doing?.. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH ROBERT!’ I made a break for the door, trying to shove Robert out of the way, but he would not budge. I smashed one of the small windows but trees had grown just outside of them, and I could not squeeze through. I suspect, as Marie suspected of Frederick, that Robert is already gone. I will try violence next, but I fear this is my last communication. To any who may come upon these writings in the future: Do not bother looking. We are all dead. Burn this forest to the ground.*”
The settlement was all but forgotten until 2009, when it was rediscovered accidentally by hikers. Since then, a battery of investigations of Midcopse have taken place. The forests surrounding it still exist just as they are described in the journal, with trees that are abnormally large; but the pink flowers described in Aaron’s journal have not been found, and there is no evidence the trees are sentient. The scientific community is divided as to how the trees grew so large, although several theories circulate. Aaron’s journal was found on the floor of one of the shacks, but the skeleton of Robert and Aaron were not in the same shack. The Eastern Pulp Mill was discovered, but Marie’s skeleton has never been found. In 2017, funding was raised to excavate the center of Midcopse Creek by the well in the center of town, since this area appeared significant in both Aaron and Marie’s journals. The project unearthed what appeared to be a mass grave. Nearly 400 human skeletons, that twisted so tightly around the roots of the trees that the bones were nearly fused with the wood.