"Township Tales" Episode Three: The Black Blizzard

“Greetings once again my curious cadre of otherworldly oddities, as we inch our way closer to the origins of a small town in Minnesota that may hold a dark secret… and consequences we may not be ready to face.”

The voice of Vera Finch oozes like bitter honey as clattering of piano keys plays in the background but then suddenly cuts out.

“But first we must investigate a town that came before - one not just lost to time, but removed from memory. A town that has seemingly been erased from our historical maps and records altogether. The town of Procyn, Wisconsin.”

A sharp piano sting hits before trailing off.

“In our previous episodes, we followed the trail of a mysterious figure known as Joseph Turner, from his first and auspicious appearance in Detroit in 1860 where he cured a young girl of a terrifying affliction, to his arrival on the banks of the Mississippi River two years later during a pivotal Civil War battle.”

We can hear Vera’s excitement as she leans into the microphone.

“Each time, Joseph's presence coincided with strange and inexplicable occurrences. In Michigan it was a disease of the mind that drove its victims to madness. In Missouri it was Confederate soldiers who moved like possessed puppets before collapsing en masse. Each time, those who witnessed these events seemed to forget them almost as quickly as they happened.”

A purposeful pause.

“But the one person who did not forget, perhaps could not forget, was Joseph Turner. We catch flashes of his trail, possibly discerning a pattern born from the antebellum as he headed northward along the veins and arteries of America's waterways. To St. Louis. To Peoria. To Dubuque. To La Crosse. Drawn northward as if along a web, tightening with every mile.

The sound of water meshes with the roar of a locomotive as the pace and sharpness of piano keys escalates.

“And so Joseph, emboldened by his actions in the Midwest and along the Mississippi, followed the darkness. Chased it northward until, in April of 1866, he arrived in Procyn, Wisconsin, he finally met the one town he couldn’t save.”

This time we hear a massive, war-like drum beat replace the previous delicate piano sounds, blending even further into the sound of the roaring locomotive until it cuts to silence.

“My name is Vera Finch… and this… is Township Tales."

🎤🎤🎤

From the silence, a howling wind and the soft patter of trees against a windowpane greet as a slow, dramatic cello can be heard.

“When the Civil War ended, barely a year prior, young states like Wisconsin did not have a lot of young men to begin with. Of thousands who marched south to fight for the Union, a large number did not march back. The towns they did leave, especially the small ones, felt hollowed out.”

A bow slides violently across cello strings.

“Like a forest with gaps in its canopy, or farmland left with dirt rather than yield. We know those towns. Those lands. The ones where all it would take is just one natural disaster to wipe the last remnants away. But Procyn’s storm didn’t arrive like a tornado - unpredictable and devastating. It was a blizzard. Slow, suffocating, and inevitable.”

The cello shifts into a low, repeating pattern. One that is circular. Hypnotic. Like a music box winding down.

“Procyn sat on the western bank of the Wisconsin River, on a stretch of land that today lies between Boscobel and Harmony Hill — a state park surrounded by small towns that appear on every geographic map of the era, alongside Procyn, until 1871.”

📝 📝 📝

An almost droning sound, like a throbbing heart beat plays in the background as Vera continues.

“In our previous episode we discussed the events of New Madrid Missouri and two very different but incredibly dire realities became apparent: either Joseph Turner and his mysterious book had the ability to erase people’s memories as a way to cover his own tracks, or whatever Turner expelled from the battlefield was determined to keep Turner isolated.

“Fortunately, just like with the diary of Lieutenant Goode, there are primary sources we can point to that prove the existence of Procyn. The first is a partial Census record - misfiled in a Madison archive for more than a century and all but doomed for destruction until a mysterious benefactor stepped in to preserve the lot of files it was being kept with. Those records, listeners, tell the tale of a community unprepared for what had been slowly, steadily, heading its way.”

We hear the sound of pages turning as Vera seems to be handling documents. Her voice rises an octave higher, tingling with excitement as she reads.

“According to the 1870 census fragment, Procyn was a town of just under 400 people – a far cry from the more than 1,500 people who called it home before the Civil War. As I mentioned earlier, the town lived and breathed lumber - specifically white pine. As a staging point for rafts heading south, work was steady—but after the war, survival depended on those who remained.”

The music has become lighter, transitioning from cello to violin and even a bit of flute.

“It was the kind of town that exists because geography and economics said it should. Not because anyone had a grand vision for it… and that is what made it vulnerable."

⛪ ⛪ ⛪

The cello returns like the sting from a viper.

“Our second source comes from a set of personal letters written by a local Lutheran Minister, the Reverend Harald Senn, found in the attic of his brother’s house during an estate sale and procured by an unnamed person or persons.”

The music softens into a mournful melody.

“Reverend Senn was not a particularly remarkable man by historical means. Just your average small-town preacher who preached his faith to a small and eager congregation every morning, noon, and night.

But it is not his sermons or his liturgies that interest us, listeners. It is in the records he kept as one of just two staff members of the Procyn Lutheran Church.”

The melody continues, bass notes dropping an octave and droning into a kind of dismissive white noise.

“In the ledger of his church, Reverend Senn began to make some peculiar observations beginning in the winter of 1868 and concluding on Christmas Eve 1870.

The notes seem innocuous at first… noting that a clergy member had missed multiple sermons and refused to answer his visits to their home.

A sharp decline in the number of confessions for an otherwise pious town.

And, on the eve of April 17, 1870, Easter Sunday, we get this message, scrawled along every inch of free parchment the log book would allow…”

A staccato of strings stab at the calming white noise like a blade.

“'I have kept this record faithfully for the six years since I arrived in Procyn to shepherd a flock that, through war and hardship, has endured. I write this now because I fear I am the last man in this town able to see the danger these people are in.

These men, women, and children by all accounts are physically well. By every measure, the congregation thrives and attendance has never been stronger, but one cannot look away from the weakness that constricts them. No reflection. No discernment. No interpretation. Just recitation. An absence of spirit.”

A sharp violin hits before trailing off.

“And it is not lost on me, on this day of resurrection, that I blasphemed by inserting the wrong verse into one of today’s hymns, one sung every Easter Sunday for the past six years, but the words were wrong. And no one noticed.

Except for one man. Who sat in the back. Someone I had not seen before… he appeared to be wearing priestly vestments but I could not tell from the dias. There was no collar. No cross. But… in row after row of darkness, and for the first time in weeks, I thought maybe, on this holiest of days, that there was the faintest hint of light in Procyn.”

Vera's voice softens with something close to reverence as she lets the words of Reverend Senn hang for a beat.

“Reverend Senn's ledger entries after Easter are sparse. Brief notations and observances, but none with the urgency or level of observation following his Easter sermon. However, in unboxing the documents, his brother found a slip of paper slipped between two blank pages with the pre-written dates of January 7 and January 14, 1871.”

A single, low drum strike.

“The writing is not consistent with that of Reverend Senn, but it is also difficult to discern, given its violent strokes, whether it was written in distress, by another person, or left by something else altogether as a warning. It reads… ‘The book is no weapon here. It speaks in thoughts; not words. The sickness here is not of body or mind, but of consent.’”

We hear silence at first, but then slowly catch the sound of a metronome slowly fading in.

“1870 was the last official year the town ceased to exist on any map, any census, any tax roll, or any other governmental record managed by the state of Wisconsin or federal government. Today, if you were to visit the state park that now occupies that stretch of land, there is no historical marker, no plaque, and no indication that at one point in time more than 1,500 souls called that area home.”

A pause.

“Listeners, it was only after learning of Reverend Senn's journal that I realized – between Detroit, Missouri, and now Procyn – this was not a story about the random appearances of the same man during times of crisis during the early years of our country. As you no doubt are beginning to realize, there is nothing ‘random’ about Joseph Turner at all.

That is when I decided to do my own digging – to see if I could find something, anything, that could shed light on the gap of time between the Reverend’s Easter sermon and that final, chilling note slid into the pages of the church’s ledger. Surely it could not be the last first-person account from Procyn. And I was right.

Which brings us to our third and final source. And this one, listeners, will chill you to the bone."

🌨️ ⚫ 🌨️

We hear the sound of howling wind and tree branches clacking against each other as the roar of a massive storm fills the auditory space before slowly, quietly fading out.

“Today we are all well aware of the National Weather Service, a vital resource that, from coast to coast, has developed the tools and technologies to predict and warn communities about impending meteorological crises. Tornadoes. Hurricanes. Floods… Blizzards.

But what few people know is that the precursor to the National Weather Service was known as the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Established by an act of Congress, the Signal Corps was tasked with setting up weather stations along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, as well as along the Mississippi Valley… with Wisconsin’s very first station being established in November… 1870.”

A whistling of wind pierces the silence left by Vera’s ominous delivery.

“Our third and final source comes from a forty-page field report filed by Lieutenant Brian Lovestead of the United States Army Signal Corps. I should note, listeners, that even in the early days of weather monitoring, the longest field reports topped out at ten pages. Whatever Lovestead saw in Procyn, he could not stop writing about it.

Cellos begin to play under Vera’s voice as she continues.

“More importantly, it was a document that no one would have thought anything of unless they were looking for it; and it turns out I wasn’t the only one who had been looking. But more on that later…”

A pause as we hear Vera shuffling papers, then a deep breath.

“While Lovestead’s report does contain some of the expected scientific knowledge of the time, including calibrations of barometric pressure water gauges, that is not what is most important…it is the notes, hand scribbled and frantic, that he wrote on each page, filling every inch from one margin to the other. Here is what he encountered, in his own words:

‘Dispatched from Milwaukee to investigate the origins of a reversal of current reported on the Wisconsin River. No anomalous flow patterns upon my initial arrival, but followed the current northward until arriving on the outskirts of Procyn at 1040 hours.

Stepping from one bank to the other I find myself in a flash of moderate precipitation but its color is not of snow but of ash.

Further in and all wind has stopped. Barometric pressure sits at the lowest point my instruments can record but I sense no changing conditions to indicate severe weather. Temperature is above freezing and yet accumulated precipitation shows no signs of melting. The situation in Procyn is impossible to diagnose using modern measurements.’”

A low piano note strikes and then holds.

“Entering Procyn I am confronted with an impossible scene. The sun shines through the clouds but the sky is dark as if in an eclipse.

Snow continues to fall from above but it is dry and as black as charcoal, but no evidence of fires is present. Nothing is present.

Walking down Procyn’s main road. Structures are intact. Livestock are grazing calmly in the fields, shaking off the falling debris as it collects in their fur and manes.

No footprints are present except my own, as far as I can see. And no responses to my calls to determine if anyone may need aid.

Dozens of homes and buildings have doorways opened into the street. I look inside and see kettles on stovetops. Half-eaten meals. A child’s doll covered in soot.

As I visit more homes it appears there has been no activity in Procyn for days but also no signs of mass exodus… horses and carriages are hitched to their posts, sleds are laid against exterior walls. No earthly tempest caused this.”

A roaring bass line, throbbing and hungry.

“After several blocks of travel I reach the center of town and find something I couldn’t fully explain if I tried. Not in scientific analysis or in the words of God… the earth beneath my feet has been cleft in twain with a chasm at its core that stretches into the depth of hell itself.

The ground is thickly lined with some sort of oil-like substance but I dare not touch it - even to collect as a sample. The town post office and bank are entirely covered in thick, black vines that throb and pulsate and flow into the maw of the darkness below.

Surrounding me are what appear to be clothing and personal effects. Dozens. No… hundreds of items are strewn about: glasses. Shoes. Bibles. And… something else. A small black book in leather binding laying at the edge of the abyss.”

A sharp, piercing violin string cuts just as Vera trails off.

“It is 1500 hours. I find myself once again on the outskirts of Procyn still unable to make sense of what I have seen.

No doubt this record will be seen as evidence of my madness, but I fear what may come if this record is not kept. A memory of a town and people not simply abandoned but ripped from this very plane of existence.

Upon reaching the edge of the pit, seeing the belongings arrayed around its rim, it was the small black book that called to me. I reached down to place it in my satchel, but as I rose, I felt another presence in my vicinity - the first sign of life since my arrival.

I turned and found myself face to face with a man, approximately six feet in height, in vestments and a long coat buttoned to the collar. He had been approaching, following me on foot from the east, without me realizing. Even then, when his presence was made known, he did not call out. He did not run. He continued to approach calmly before stopping approximately 10 feet from my position. I watched as his eyes focused on the maw first and then locked onto mine.

The man looked at me for what seemed like an eternity but could not have been more than 30 seconds before he told me to put the book down and step away from the pit.

I asked him to identify himself and state his purpose in the town, but he did not answer. Instead, he repeated the instruction—this time with greater urgency. I attempted to question the man further, but found that whatever I had intended to ask had already left me.

The book in my hand had changed. Not in form, nor in weight, but in some less measurable quality that made it difficult to ignore and harder still to release.

The man observed this immediately. His attention fixed not on me, but on the object itself, and I noted then a shift in his demeanor—subtle, but unmistakable. Not fear. Not surprise. Something closer to defeat.

‘That book has taken enough from this town today,’ he told me. ‘And if you intend to keep it, you will not remember this conversation within the hour. In a week you will not remember this town. You will remember only the book, and where it wants you to take it next. I was wrong to bring it here.'”

A rush of woodwinds overtakes Vera’s voice as her voice breaks in a nervous gasp to reclaim air into her lungs.

“I swear by my station and my life that what happened next is God’s truth. The darkness within the pit called to me.

It spoke in my wife’s voice and used a name we share for one another that she alone knew, asking me to come home. Then it was the voice of our baby girl, crying for her father.

I did not even register my feet had moved. One moment I was at the edge, and the next I was on the ground, the breath driven from me as the book slipped from my grasp and fell into the ashen snow. I cannot account for the force he used—only that it was enough to break whatever hold had taken me.

Clarity returned all at once.

My surroundings came rushing back into focus, and with them a cold so profound it set my whole body trembling. The man did not check on me. He did not speak further. He only looked to the book… then lowered his head, as though in quiet resignation.

He began to walk away.

I managed to call out just enough words to ask if he would return with me and bear witness to the goings on in Procyn, but if he answered in any meaningful way I cannot tell you what he might have said.

What did remain were his eyes. Cold and broken, like the lone surviving soldier of a platoon who had lost count of the dead.

And then I was beyond the tree line.

I don’t remember how I arrived here and have been struggling to recall, beyond my own handwriting and my trust in my own sanity, that Procyn existed at all.

Even now, I cannot say with confidence that Procyn existed beyond what I have written here.

All that remains is a small, black, leatherbound book I found tucked into my satchel.

But I do not remember taking it."

🎤🎤🎤

A long silence. No music. Just emptiness. When Vera finally speaks, her voice is soft and melancholy.

"Lieutenant Brian Lovestead filed this very report upon his return to Milwaukee where, by all accounts, it was promptly dismissed as conjecture at best and madness at worst. There is no record of a follow-up return to Procyn or anywhere in the town’s vicinity. By the time of the next census in 1880 there was no mention of Procyn at all.”

A beat.

“What the census did show, however, was the emergence of a new town located on a plot of land made prime for homesteading in the wake of the U.S.-Dakota War. A town that had been officially incorporated just a year prior… under the leadership of Mayor Joseph Turner.”

Warm cellos return, bringing life back to Vera’s voice as we can almost hear a soft smile from behind her microphone.

“And as I mentioned earlier, listeners, I have not been the only person interested in what happened to Procyn, Wisconsin more than 150 years ago. It turns out they have their own theories about our friend Joseph Turner and the reason behind Montevideo's mysterious lighthouse… and where it went.”

A soft piano blends in from the cellos before slowly fading into barely a whisper.

“Join me, and my new friend, next time to learn more. Until then… I’m Vera Finch and this has been Township Tales."