The Ghost of Dillon Mews

Twelve years after a young man vanished, a grouse hunter returns to the same woods—and finds something waiting.

This story originally appeared in the fall 2024 issue of Project Upland Magazine.

As the years progressed, I’ve traveled to many different places in the wilderness, each with its own distinct atmosphere. That might be a loose term for the energy they emit, but I think you understand what I mean.

Some places I won’t bother to name have struck a serious wave of fear into me after certain events transpired, but that’s not the norm. Only two have ever given the impression that they would eat me if given the opportunity. One such place is the woods surrounding the banks of a river in the Temagami wilderness, and the other is a provincial park in south-central Ontario.

The former has a nasty habit of making people disappear over the decades, but it’s absolutely scenic, holds some incredible trout fishing, and is a backcountry paddler’s wet dream. The latter is, as far as anyone can tell, nothing but a tract of relatively untouched Canadian Shield with its own protective designation. A person can still hunt grouse there or catch their limit of bluegills if they’re willing to canoe into it. Yet, its forests hold more mystery than anything else within easy driving distance.

In 2007, those woods swallowed a 20-year-old outdoorsman and never spit him out. It became one of the wildest conspiracies this writer has ever heard.

Dillon Mews disappeared in late October on a solo camping trip that should have been as routine as anything. However, something went wrong somewhere along the way. When he didn’t return home, where his father anticipated his arrival, a search party was assembled. Tracking dogs couldn’t pick up his scent anywhere past where he’d parked his Ford Ranger along the lonely road skirting the edge of the parklands, and soon his name was simply a whisper in a crowd of people who might say something like, “Remember that young guy who vanished?”

What struck me as strange was that the incident had little to no local press coverage. It felt swept under the rug; out of sight, out of mind. The police and park rangers spent, in total, less than 36 hours looking for him before calling off the search. They never found so much as a trace of him.

Almost twelve years later, the whole thing still lingers in the back of my mind. This is mostly because a close friend informed me of the precise whereabouts Dillon was rumored to have planned to camp: the top end of Fairview Lake. This, it turned out, was actually an area I’d almost hunted before, but a creek stood in the way of getting there. Historically, that creek had been my turn-around point.

The place was, as I’d discovered over the years, loaded with snowshoe hare and ruffed grouse. I knew via satellite image that the top end of the lake had a long, low, flat area. There, willow saplings met sparse cedar stands mixed with hemlock, indicating that a vast beaver marsh was there long before I started visiting the park. A place with that kind of habitat has serious potential. The more I thought about that potential and how much I love a good mystery, I started to concoct a plan to get up there and hike waders in with me. That way, I could cross the creek, camp out, and explore the area for a couple of nights.

In hindsight, I suspect that I was asking for trouble before even stepping foot on the other side of the creek. After all, this was allegedly where a well-reputed, highly experienced, particularly athletic individual had vanished without a trace. His equipment was never found, and things had a very ominous feel about them. Going there for three days of solo small game hunting never occurred to me as being a potentially dangerous thing, even after hearing all the theories as to how and why Dillon went missing. Rumors ranged from mafia involvement, Bigfoot, predatory black bear attacks, aliens, and anything else that fit the bill.

It was late October when I finally made the three-mile hike to the bottom of Fairview Lake, donned the waders, crossed the creek, and followed the shoreline to the top end where the little old beaver meadow sat all brown and beige. I’d started the morning trek as early as possible to allow for some hunting time once camp was set up and enough firewood had been gathered. A tarp was erected to shelter the cooking area in the likely event of late October rain. By 3 p.m., I headed north with a shotgun to look for dinner.

That night was when things began to happen that I still cannot explain but can describe.

I turned in for the night after a dinner of canned soup, having sat around my tiny campfire to read for a couple of hours and listen to the evening breeze die down as darkness crept in. Sleep came quickly after I crawled into my sleeping bag, clicked off my headlamp, and gave in to the quietness without so much as a worry in the world.

With a rush of adrenaline, I woke to what sounded like a voice muttering something not too far from the tent. As I sat up, the scratchy sleeping bag fabric sounded obnoxiously loud until I was completely upright and fully still once again.

My wristwatch read shortly before 2 a.m. That’s a strange time for anyone to be out wandering around anywhere, let alone multiple miles into a trailless wilderness. I listened again when the voice, hushed and muffled, came from someone walking through the tall grasses in the meadow. The thought of having my shotgun loaded never crossed my mind, and I left the firearm in the tent as I emerged, headlamp on, to see who the lost traveler was.

Now, you probably know how this goes, but after getting my boots and coat on as the frost glittered in the bright stream of the headlamp, I found no discernible signs of anyone ever having come close to camp, despite the frost having covered everything so thickly. Still, having been so sure that I’d heard someone, I called out a loud, echoing, “Is anyone out there?” into the night.

After a momentary pause, a lone coyote answered from an untold distance away before the darkness engulfed all sounds entirely. I got the fire going again, if for no other reason than to create a beacon of light for anyone who might be stumbling around in the dead of night, but exhaustion found me once again no more than two hours later. By that time, I figured that anyone within earshot would have shown up by now, so I crawled back into my sleeping bag to salvage whatever sleep I could.

By the time dawn broke, I was already fully dressed, had eaten breakfast, and packed my things for a day afield. That day was uneventful, with the exception of a couple of shots taken at flushing ruffed grouse, one of which ended up in the vest, the other of which did not. The night’s unexplainable events constantly replayed over and over in my head; I wasn’t exactly paying attention the way I should have been.

By late afternoon, my GPS indicated I was just far enough away from camp that returning before dark was out of the question. Not wanting to waste time, I powered back to the lakeshore north of camp and followed it south to the creek that flows into Fairview Lake, a long four miles away. From there, camp would be just a short jaunt. The route along the shore and creek was unfamiliar territory, but it was also the path of least resistance as best as I could tell.

All went well, and with that grouse still in the back of my vest, visions of fire-roasted grouse with baked beans made my stomach growl. In the overpowering darkness, the creek eventually gave way to Fairview Lake. From there, I looked in the direction of my camp in the old beaver meadow and was absolutely shocked to see the glow of a small campfire illuminating my camp. I was certain I doused my morning fire before I left, not wanting to be the cause of the “great wildfires of late October,” but that was also almost eight hours ago. There wasn’t enough wood left on the coals in the first place to have kept it going this long.

Admittedly, I casually unslung my shotgun and slowly walked into camp. A fresh pile of wood cut from downed branches was piled up on the opposite side of the fire from my tent, the soft ground revealing prints from a single set of bare feet. When I placed my boot next to them, they would have been somewhere between a size 10 and 10.5.

The tracks never went near the tent, nor could I see any discernible sign of boots, shoes, or any other kind of footwear. There was no trace of someone actually cooking, no trash left behind, and no indication that they’d tried to leave some form of communication about their intentions or whether they’d be coming back.

To put it politely, I was completely and utterly distressed. I had the uncontrollable urge to leave camp right then and there, to hike out in the dark, back to my vehicle and the safety of civilization. I could always come back with others to recover my kit, and even if I couldn’t, there wasn’t one item I’d be leaving behind that I couldn’t replace. Why even risk sticking around with whatever was going on?

Eventually, though, perhaps through exhaustion or hunger, I began to calm myself enough to function critically and logically. After all, there was still a fresh grouse to be cooked and a can of baked beans to be placed close to the coals. If anyone was coming back, it seemed likely that they’d probably be friendly, maybe even good company. People who are willing to hike through the backcountry with no trail except the one they carve for themselves are, generally, good-natured individuals.

Staying awake after filling my stomach was difficult, but the powerful feeling that I would have a visitor again that night, invisible or otherwise, was enough to keep me on my toes as the temperature fell and the fire burned. I was warm enough to manage the cold air, and in the very bottom of my hiking bag was one lonesome beer I’d hauled in as a celebration of my last night out in the woods. It was ice cold and went down smooth, but shortly thereafter, I nodded off.

In the glow of a dying fire, my shotgun unloaded and leaning against the only stump within fifty yards of camp, a voice spoke out of the darkness and woke me. To my right, a tall young man stood, wearing a blue plaid long-sleeved shirt and hiking pants, pack loaded with gear, but standing just far enough back that the fire didn’t fully illuminate his face.

“I have to be honest; I wasn’t expecting to see anyone else out here, especially tonight,” he said to me.

“That makes two of us,” I replied. “If you’re turned around, you’re more than welcome to pitch here for the night. I don’t mind one bit.”

He looked out toward the lake behind me, then down at his boots. “I appreciate the offer, but I think I might push further back toward the creek.”

I couldn’t help it; I asked if he was the one who kept my fire going earlier and was generous enough to bring the small pile of firewood, too.

He looked puzzled and sort of squinted his eyes as he stared at the collection of dead wood, then turned back toward me and told me he wasn’t quite sure. A puzzling and bizarre response, I thought. I pressed a little more.

“How long have you been out here?” I asked.

The young man stood there, seemingly thinking about it, and shrugged. That same puzzled look graced his face once again before he stuttered, “I gotta say, I’m actually not quite sure of that, either.”

Neither of us said anything for a moment after that. He stood there, a distressed look on his face, seemingly trying to put the pieces of a shattered mind back together, trying to recall in his head the answers to the questions I had asked him.

“Dillon?” I asked quietly.

He looked at me from the edge of the darkness with such confusion, with a touch of shock and bewilderment, while a strong breeze rustled the tall dead grass in the meadow. I glanced over in the direction the breeze was coming from, and the air blowing against my exposed eyes made me blink. When I opened my eyes, the fire was nothing but a collection of faint glowing embers. The breeze was gone. I was completely alone.

I stood up, figuring I’d dreamt it all, and resigned myself to the sleeping bag and rolled sweater pillow, but sleep never did find me that night. Lying there on my back, hands behind my head, I replayed the dream over and over, closing my eyes and seeing it all unfold as real as the tent that surrounded me. The shotgun was locked and cased, safe.

That night still remains the longest silence I’ve ever known. Not a breeze whispered, nor was there so much as a riffle on the surface of the lake. No animals made any sounds. Just glossy stars shimmering so bright I could see them through the fly of the tent if I held my breath; the warmth of my exhales momentarily obstructed the view.

The next morning, I packed up camp after standing in the exact spot I’d been sure I’d had a conversation with a ghost the night before, looking for any signs of the encounter but coming up empty. With my pack loaded, I doused the fire with mud and dirt before heading toward the creek. The shotgun had its shells, and I fully intended to hunt my way out of there in a long, arcing route that would take me through prime grouse habitat. If nothing else, hunting would help to keep my thoughts from running wild with the night’s events. At that point, that was all I wanted.

I reached the creek and, almost stereotypically, I had to look back at my campsite. I expected to see the ghost of Dillon Mews standing there, staring at me with some sort of sad envy that I got the privilege of leaving while his haunted soul stayed put in this lonely place. But, of course, when I glanced back, no one was there.

That was more than enough closure for me.

I’ve never felt the overwhelming urge to return to Fairview Lake or that park. Not because of a fear of the supernatural or having to relive what must have been an unfathomably lucid dream in the dark and stillness of a wild place. In fact, I suppose there’s not any reason in particular. When I pass along the borders of that park every now and again, I’m left to wonder about the real reason I went hunting back there at all.