Everyday Paranormal Experiences, Interview #5
“Oh yes, I’ve seen her many, many times,” Mrs. Carlsen tells me with pride, “I doubt anyone is counting – I know I’m not – but I’m sure I’ve seen her more than just about anyone alive today!”
The girl that Mrs. Carlsen refers to having seen so many times is a long dead Native American Princess that haunts the waters of one of the largest lakes in Minnesota, Mille Lacs. She’s very sparse on the details of the Princess’ story. She quickly explains that the Princess was left on an island in the lake by a Prince to keep her from harm’s way during a battle. When the battle was complete, and the Prince victorious, he was to return for her and they were to be married. Mrs. Carlsen describes that as days passed, the Princess soon came to realize her Prince must have been killed in the battle, and that she would be stranded on the island. Unable to swim, the Princess sat down and died of heartbreak on the tiny island.
“So now, every night she gets up and searches the shores for any sign of her long lost love,” Mrs. Carlsen says cheerfully.
Mrs. Carlsen used to live in a nearby town of a similar namesake, Milaca. Her family kept a small cabin on the shore of Mille Lacs, and they spent a good deal of every summer there. It was during one of these summer stays that Mrs. Carlsen first saw the Princess’ ghost.
“She’s just a faint white smudge of a thing,” she explains to me, “Can’t really tell that it’s a person, except you can feel it in your soul. I feel her loss, and I feel her confusion when I see her. She just drifts along the shores in a slow but steady trance. I don’t think she rightly knows if she’s dead or not. She’s never done anything but that. Drift along the shores at night – every night, though different times.”
Now, Mrs. Carlsen has a home on the shores of Mille Lacs and laments the exaggerated tales that have been growing from the Princess’ simple and sad tale. She explains, “I’ve heard some people say she was left for dead by her angry father, and others that she was drowned by the enemy tribe. There’s even a tale about an island of boulders that by moonlight the rocks churn and grind anything left on its surface to dust and bloody smears. That’s all bunk! She’s a gentle creature, dead of a broken heart.”
Mrs. Carlsen’s tale is… anticlimactic, perhaps, but does that negate the value of the truth in her story? Are there simple paranormal events that go unnoticed for their subtley? Is Mrs. Carlsen’s Indian Princess another case of, “The Lady and the Lake?” If so, what is the connection between female ghosts and bodies of water? In any event, this interview was surprisingly different compared the others I’ve done – Mrs. Carlsen was fond of her experience, and looked forward to her next. Have you had a paranormal experience that left a positive impression, or heard of one? If you have, I’d love to hear from you.
Next Week’s Everyday Paranormal Experiences, Interview #6: “Damned Eyes!”
On the Article Series:
I myself am a huge skeptic of all things paranormal or extra-terrestrial and I tend to take most tales of either with a huge grain of salt – sometimes even an entire salt shaker, depending on the tale that’s being weaved. I have even had a couple ghostly and otherworldly experiences myself, which I may relate in later stories – and I’m skeptical of those! Is what I experienced the truth of the experience or is there an empirical explanation that I simply have not yet unlocked? Regardless of my skeptical nature, ghost stories and alien encounters have always fascinated me as they have all of humanity for thousands of years.
It is this fascination that I wish to convey in a unique and different paranormal or alien experience every week – Thursday, to be exact. I will be conducting interviews with everyday people to hear their stories and relate them back to you, the Paranoid Gamers. Perhaps I’ll be interviewing some of you, as well.
Do you have an experience of a haunted item, place, or person? Have you been visited by aliens or heretofore undocumented intelligent life – terrestrial or extra so? If you’d like to share your experience and possibly have your tale published in this series of articles, please contact me and we can relive your experience.
[signoff1]
Robert Strick
September 6, 2012 @ 7:11 pm
This seems to be a Woman in White story, any details on what she’s wearing or whether it’s a full bodied apparition? Interesting stuff.
Rustyn Clark
September 11, 2012 @ 6:54 pm
Mrs. Carlsen wasn’t very clear on what the ghost looked like. I got the impression she didn’t ever see the ghost up close.