Payback in a New Novel

By Khaliela Wright

Low, haunting sounds carried like whispers on the wind often emanate from the lonesome mist that hovers over Spirit Lake. People claim those whispers are the mournful laments of the dead seeking to free themselves from their watery graves. While the bodies dumped in Spirit Lake in Stuart Scott’s new novel, Spirit Lake Payback, are fictional, the lake has claimed a number of real-life bodies, giving it a well-earned reputation for being haunted.

For example, in 2012 Luke Anana-Kuewa was found floating facedown in the lake, where he had been dumped after having been beaten, choked, and smothered. But Spirit Lake apparently began claiming bodies long before Fredrick Blackwell of the Panhandle Lumber Company founded the town of the same name and began selling lots in 1907.