The Jamestown Curse

About four-hundred years ago, there used to be a town just outside Jamestown, Virginia called Juniper. It wouldn't be in the history books. It's only passed down in oral history among hunters and slayers.

Even before the town existed, people woulse lose their children to a certain spot on the outskirts of Jamestown. The children would feel sad, stop, ten the wind would pick up and something would snatch them up and they'd never be been again.

Eventually, Juniper sprang up with its town center right on the spot. There's a reason it's not there anymore. It's the same reason history didn't want to record it. History is written by the victors after all.

It was a cheery colonial town. There was a church, a clinic and a schoolhouse all around the town center with the residential area off to one side. The sheriff's office building/jail was the one dividing the residential area from the town center. The well was between Juniper and Jamestown. Most Juniper residents had come over from Jamestown since they could not afford to live there.

Most children had scary stories about the well. They would dare each other to go down it. in the bucket. The one who stayed down longest without getting scared won. There were different stories about the well. Some children said body-snatchers lived down the well. Some said it was cursed, but what the nature was of the curse no one knew.

There were also scary stories about the house on the very end of town. Children would dare each other to stay in there overnight. They thought a witch used to live there with her cats and that she died in there. It was said her ghost haunted it at midnight.

No one thought of the spot.

Eventually, the parents of the missing children starte seeing them on the outskirts of the town. They always had these strange expressions on their faces, as though they were curiously examining them.

They all reported this at the confessional. The priest decided to have everyoen meet since this was too much of a coincidence. He would hold meetings once a week for the parents who felt relieved that they weren't crazy since others had seen their children too. They all described them as hunched over as though starving, emaciated, and rapidly inclining their heads and blinking their eyes at them. This did not seem characteristic of any of their missing children.

One day, the mayor's daughter was walking through the spot. She was whisked off liek the other children were before Juniper was built. Only the basket she'd been carrying remained to show any trace of her.

The mayor himself came by in his cart to pick her up, which was when he noticed her basket. Suspecting kidnapping, he went around town, banging on everyone's doors. No one had seen her.

He was done enquiring about her around nightfall. Just as the sun was setting, he thought he saw her at the edge of the woods.

He spent a week tring to deny that it was her. He finally agreed to have the priest visit him and told him the whole thing. The priest told him about the group and what the other parents had seen.

Eventually, the remaining residents of the town shuffled through the spot so much that they'd all been in it. The night that it was complete, they saw something odd.

The town was surrounded by these white-furred wolf-men. They were all fairly short, one would say child-sized, except for one.

They were all looking at the town residents like the missing children had looked at their parents after they'd gone missing.

A few hours later, everyone in the town had become one of those things they had no name for.

The ones they'd stolen land from had a name for it, especially the local tribe that used to live on the land now called Jamestown and Juniper: Wendigo.

According to them, it got stronger the more it ate, hungrier too.

It turned out that a medicine man was murdered on that spot. As he died, he cursed the spot to bring Wendigos on the white ones instead of his own people.

The Wendigo's favorite meat was children.