The 5th Entry

 For those who have difficulty reading cursive, I've provided a clear, printed version below.

It’s been five days since the lake incident. Five days and I still can’t shake it from my head. I went back to Lake Winona today. I don’t even know why. Maybe I thought I could find some kind of answer, maybe just prove to myself that I wasn’t losing it. I don’t know. I cast my line into the same spot. Sat there for hours, waiting, watching the surface, but nothing happened. No big pull, no dark shape beneath the water. I kept telling myself that maybe it was just a big fish. Maybe my mind exaggerated it. But the more I tried to convince myself, the less sure I felt. There was a part of me, a voice in the back of my head, saying it could’ve been anything driftwood, a shadow, something my brain twisted into a monster. It’s the kind of thing you’d hear people dismiss as hysteria. I get that now. But what bothers me is how real it felt in that moment. I swear, my hands still remember how the rod shook, how the line snapped like it was nothing. I don’t want to be the guy who starts believing in lake monsters. I never wanted to be the one chasing after shadows, but here I am. Standing on the shore, desperate to see something, anything, to prove I’m not going crazy. Nothing showed up today. No strange creatures lurking beneath the surface. But there’s still that nagging feeling I can’t shake. Did I really see something, or am I just convincing myself I did because I want to believe it? Either way, I’ll probably be back here tomorrow.

    This entry shows my grandfather caught in a painful tug-of-war between belief and doubt. Five days after the “incident,” he was still drawn back to Lake Winona, desperate for answers. He tried to rationalize what happened—a fish, driftwood, maybe even his own mind—but he couldn’t shake how real it felt in that moment. The way he described the rod shaking and the line snapping haunts me. He didn’t want to be the man chasing monsters, but he couldn’t stop himself. Reading this, I can feel his frustration, his need for validation. Maybe tomorrow, in his favorite spot, I’ll see what he couldn’t.