Cool news this week: my short story MIKE’S POND is live on Wilde Oats Issue 9.
You can check it out here.
Odd story about how MIKE’S POND came to be.
It started as an experimental piece while I was participating in a writers critique group back in 2009. We decided to all try writing horror stories for a change of pace, and it got me thinking about the stories that scared me as a child.
I have an older brother so the source material was considerable. He used to tell me all kinds of frightening things about the world, bizarre suburban legends, in addition to disturbing “truths” of anatomy. Did you know that, instead of blood, your butt is full of green juice?
We grew up in a suburb north of Buffalo, New York, where there were many plots of undeveloped, wooded land, tempting exploration grounds for pre-teen boys, especially in the summer when we were largely unattended by our working parents. There was an overgrown place called ‘Shotgun,’ where supposedly a boy got killed by the father of a girl he got pregnant. Then there was Mike’s Pond.
Without giving too much of the story away, since I’d really love people to read it, Mike’s Pond evoked the most imaginative tales from my youth. It was an acre or two of swampy land between the buzzing thruway and our handsome suburban enclave, and it was cordoned off by a fence.
All the legends about the place are true. Well, at least I heard them at some point. The characters are fictionalized, and the narrator is more of an amalgamation of me at different points during my teenage years than me as a twelve-year old boy. The story turned out to be more coming-of-age than horror. I guess I can’t help myself.
I remember riding my bike to mikes Pond every day. Later a kid told me that a kid named mike drowned in the lake because his buddies were not paying attention and he got wrapped in seaweed. So the kid told me if anyone goes in there mike grabs them and wraps them up in the seaweed to drown. the place was a little eerie even before I heard the legend.
George Brummer
this was back in the early to mid 70.s I have always wondered about the history of Miked Pond. my father believed it to be a Quarry that flooded back in the 50s?
George Bummer
Hi George,
Thanks for stopping by. I was told Mike’s Pond was a quarry as well, and I remember a derivation of the urban legend involving attacking seaweed. Did you know that they have now developed all of the land around it? An old friend from elementary school (Smallwood), pointed that out to me. The swampy woods are gone, and now there are houses that are “lake front” property. 🙂
Andy
Mikes Pond was a story where a little boy drowned in the pond, the is quick sand and his body was never found only a one of his sneakers.
Mike’s Pond ! I grew up a few blocks away. Everyone heard about Mike drowning in the pond, that seemed to be the only “fact” that was not in dispute. In my pre-teens we heard about it, but it was behind the fence.
We heard about the all entangling seaweed and the quicksand. ( Someone was always sinking in Quicksand on Ramar of the Jungle, so it was only natural that it be at Mike’s Pond ). There were also additional drownings or disappearances , maybe as many as 8 kids depending on who “knew” about Mike’s Pond. All of these drownings were either due to the seaweed or the quicksand. There may have been a kidnapper tied in some how.
In our young teens we climbed the fence and fished and swam in Mike’s Pond. When we were in our later teens it was a great place to shoot BB guns, Find out if Cherry Bombs and M-80’s really exploded under water , and eventually smoke cigarettes, drink beer or Boone’s Farm.
The Quarry disappeared in the 60’s when they built I-290. You can still see the limestone along parts of 290.
Hi Buck!
Thanks so much for stopping by. That all sounds familiar to me in terms of Mike’s Pond folklore. Cherry bombs and M-80s – that takes me back as well. I don’t know if fireworks/pyrotechnics were unique to kids growing up in that area, but they were certainly very popular in my little crowd, and we loved sneaking off at night into wooded areas to play around with that stuff too.
There was also the “legend” of “Shot Gun” you may remember which was a wooded area on Main Street across the street from Bakert’s convenience store (now closed down) and past Daeman College. And the area around Park School was a fun creepy, place to go to late at night, which is actually from where I borrowed the mutant muskrat idea (there was a muskrat den in a little island on the pond back there). Maybe I’ll write some more stories about those bits of Amherst folklore some day. 🙂
Smoked plenty of herb at, both, Shotgun and Mike’s pond. Park School had a nice woody hangout with a pond too. Mike’s pond had huge schools of Goldfish(carp)[Big red one’s like koi].
My dad claims there was a boat that took people water skiing on Mike’s pond back in the ’40s. This place can’t be mentioned without acknowledging “pillowhead”, the long dreadlocked homeless fixture whose shelter is just across the Youngman(I-290). Dyke corner was just across Main st from the pond. I’m not anti-gay it was just a teenage adage we labeled Bentham East and Kings Hwy. We used to say it must be in the water cuz Idina, Kara and Kristine all grew up to be loving kind cool bonafide lesbians who lived on same corner in different homes. All were cool and friends of mine and appreciated that humor. Today their would have been a civil rights protest generated and fueled by a 3rd party on some social media site espousing diversity and sensitivity.
Fun times.
Hey Timbers – Good to hear from you! I think of everything I’ve written, I get the most responses from people regarding this (very) short story, mainly from people who knew about Mike’s Pond.
You stumbled on an old announcement when the story was picked up by an online journal, back in 2011, and that journal is now defunct. If you’re interested, you can still read the story for free as I published it as an e-book at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/432867
I remember the goldfish, and I remember signs of vagrancy, though I don’t think I knew about pillowhead. I also remember that strangely Mike’s Pond was my first introduction to pornography. I may have been ten or eleven years old, and I used to follow around my older brother and his friends. They went to the pond after dark (somewhat of the premise of my fictionalized memoir), and we found copies of Playboy and Penthouse magazine scattered around.
That’s a funny story about Dyke corner, and I take no offense. Just in the spirit of teenage humor, which can be absurd and self-effacing.
Thanks for sharing your recollections. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll try putting together all the stories people have shared with me about Mike’s Pond.
A friend of mine in California is researching Mike’s Pond, I will give him your name. We grew up on Avalon Dr. and Grant, going to CKS for grammar school. Great memories of playing hockey on ice east of park club lane and finding signs of a hermit living in a small cave there. The years were 1958 to 1961. Tar
Hey Terry – Thanks for stopping by. I think I should write more about Mike’s Pond. It definitely gets a lot of responses from people. I’m happy to swap stories with your friend. You guys were a bit before my time. I would guess I wasn’t introduced to Mike’s Pond until 1980 or so. I don’t remember distinctly, but I must’ve been around 10 years old.