🌙 The Coin at Blackwater Lake

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(A Gold Coin Horror Story – Part One)
by The Nightly Storyteller

It was almost too bright for something so old.

Half-buried in the mud near the reeds at the edge of Blackwater Lake — a place locals avoided after sunset — it glinted in the late afternoon sun like it had been waiting.

A gold coin.

Not new. Not fake.

One side bore a strange symbol: a woman weeping beneath a willow tree. The other? Faded script reading: “Remember me.”

Elena Carter crouched down, latex gloves still on from cataloging old town records all morning. She wasn’t supposed to be here alone — just finishing up research for her article on disappearing wetlands — but something pulled her off-trail.

A hush in the trees… like wind speaking one word over and over: stay.

She picked it up anyway.

Cold bit through rubber — a jolt that ran up her arm like touching frozen wire. She nearly dropped it… but didn’t.

“It’s just metal,” she muttered, slipping it into an evidence bag labeled Personal. Her journalist instincts flared: Why would someone bury gold here? And why does no record mention this design?

That night — back at her motel — she Googled feverishly under buzzing fluorescent light.
Nothing.
No historical matches.
No numismatic databases listed anything close.

Just before sleep took her (finally), she flipped it again on her bedside table…

And caught movement in the mirror across the room —

Not hers.

For half a second — a woman stood behind her reflection:
Soaked hair clinging to gray skin,
eyes wide with silent pleading,
mouth opening as if to scream…

Then gone.

Only Elena remained — alone again… heart pounding under ribs like trapped wings.

She told herself: exhaustion.
Too many hours driving rural roads.
Too much caffeine.

But when she turned back?
The coin now lay face-down — the weeping willow side up…

Even though she’d left it showing “Remember me.”

Two days later, Elena met Daniel Reece — a soft-spoken land surveyor helping coordinate conservation efforts along Blackwater Shoreline. He smiled easily, offered coffee, shared maps dotted with red zones marked unstable soil.

He seemed kind. Helpful.
Until Elena asked about unclaimed property near Lot 14 — the exact area where she found the coin.

His fingers twitched slightly around his mug handle.
Steam curled upward between them — and for just one blink — he looked past her shoulder into space… whispering two words under breath:

“Still here.”

Later — in hushed calls to town clerks and obituaries buried deep online — Elena uncovered what he’d tried to hide:
Five years ago, his wife, Lillian, vanished during storm surge cleanup near those same reeds. No body found. Case closed as accident — or suicide-by-current.

But police notes mentioned one odd detail:
Her favorite necklace — an heirloom pendant shaped exactly like...

…the weeping willow.

Elena froze typing.
The coin still sat beside her laptop screen — one phrase glowing too loud now:

“Remember me.”

Before dawn next day, armed only with a voice recorder and growing dread, Elena returned — to document everything before contacting authorities.

Only Daniel arrived first — shovel over shoulder, eyes dead calm beneath cold stars above lake-black water rippling softly below them both.

“You weren’t supposed to dig,” he said quietly — not angry, but certain,
like correcting bad math or spoiled milk left out too long.

“You should’ve stayed away.”

And then — he told her everything:

Lillian hadn’t run away.
She’d discovered what he was doing underground…
Illegal dumping masked by sinkholes.

When she threatened exposure?
He held onto love while dragging stones into a sack and tied them around wrists already numb from fear.

“She screamed underwater longer than I expected,” he admitted flatly.
“But you’ll go quieter — I hope.”

He lunged.

They fought silently through weeds until both fell hard against the muck-edge of shore;
mud spraying skyward;
recorder cracking into silence inside her jacket pocket.

And then — it happened.

The coin slipped free from her coat fold…
Rolled once down damp earth...
Stopped right at the waterline...

Silence swallowed everything — even crickets fled soundless inland —

Then came coldness unlike anything either had known:
Air thickened ice-sharp despite the humid summer night.
Daniel gasped — not pain, but sudden weight pressing chest inward.
Breath fogged unnaturally white even as moonlight dimmed overhead.

From black depths rose shapes not quite human yet impossible not to see:

Hair fanned outward underwater without ripple.
Pale arms lifted slowly from the lakebed.
Fingers clenched.

The ghost lifted her hand — one pale finger trembling before pointing straight at Daniel.
He froze.
For the first time since confessing, fear cracked through his calm.

The lake answered her gesture.

Water churned, spiraling upward in a sudden roar. A thin column twisted skyward, dragging mist and moonlight into its core — a ghostly waterspout forming between them. The air thickened with pressure, tasting of iron and rain.

Daniel stumbled backward, shouting words that vanished under the wind’s howl.
The vortex coiled tighter, circling him like a serpent made of glass.
“Lillian…” he gasped, half plea, half prayer.

The waterspout struck.
It didn’t drown him — it took him.
One blink he was there, thrashing in the spray; the next, he was gone, drawn into a silence so complete it made Elena’s ears ring.

Then it ended.

The surface smoothed.
The ghost watched her for a moment, eyes hollow but not unkind.
Then she sank back into the black depths, as if the lake itself was exhaling her name.

Elena staggered to her knees. Her heart hammered; her breath came ragged.
When she looked down, the coin lay beside her hand — gleaming with quiet, impossible light.

She reached for it — hesitated — then watched as it rolled on its own toward the water.
It paused at the edge, shimmered once in the moonlight, and slipped beneath the surface with barely a ripple.

By dawn, the shore was still.
Daniel Reece was gone.
Blackwater Lake slept again.

Miles away, in another town under another moon, a child kicked at the dirt near an old well and saw something glint.
A gold coin.
A woman weeping beneath a willow tree.
And faint words along the edge:
“Remember me.”

Stick around. Subscribe. Share.

X (Twitter): @NightlyStoryTel


Instagram: @NightlyStoryteller


Bluesky: nightlystoryteller.bsky.


 And if you dare… drop a comment and tell me your favorite ghost story, urban legend, or lake-town horror memory.
We’re just getting started — and the water’s only getting darker.


🕯️ thenightlystoryteller.blogspot.com


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