The Photograph at Lake Winema

In the summer of 1997, I spent a week at my grandmother's cabin on Lake Winema, a small man-made reservoir in central Illinois. The cabin was quiet, the lake was low from drought, and I found a photograph tucked behind a loose board in the closet. It showed a woman I didn't recognize, standing on the dock with a man whose face had been scratched out. That night, I heard footsteps on the dock and a woman's voice calling a name I'd never heard. The next morning, I asked my grandmother about the photo. She told me the woman was her older sister, Claire, who drowned in the lake in 1953. But she said Claire had no boyfriend, no man in her life. And then she said something that made my blood run cold: Claire's body was never found. The water level had dropped that year, too. I went back to the closet. The photo was gone. The loose board was nailed shut. And that night, I heard the footsteps again, closer this time, and a whisper against my window: 'You found me.' #LakeWinema #CentralIllinois #1953Drowning #FamilySecret #GrandmothersCabin #ForgottenPhoto #ScratchedOutFace #DroughtYear #Summer1997 #MidwestHorror #AtticMemories #TheUnseen #FexingoHorror #HorrorPodcast #ThingsInTheAttic #LunaNarrates #SoloNarration #AtmosphericHorror #AtticHorror #FoundObjects Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo