The Rogue Trader

 The Becky Room A tale of tragic loss in the desert heat The Stillness of Becky: A Legend of The Mulberry Inn The Mulberry Inn in St. George, Utah, built in 1873 as the grand Edwin G. Wooley / Charles F. Foster home, is the longest-running Bed & Breakfast in Southern Utah. It is a monument of pioneer ambition, but its history is laced with secrets and a chilling local lore. The Attic's Secret and a Child's Despair In the blistering summer of 1901, the Inn's already storied past took a tragic turn. Six-year-old Becky and her mother, Estelle , were hidden in the unfinished attic alcove, an impossibly tight, and opressivly airless space. This was already famous in local legends, having served as a known hiding place for polygamists fleeing the U.S. Marshals years before. Its invisible entrance was cleverly disguised, often cited in historical accounts as a concealed door and a hole in the ceiling discovered during later renovations. Estelle had fled to...

  The Purveyor of Joy: L.A. Goon's Tale A tale of the power of joy told to The Rogue Trader by his mentor The fire was a quiet, necessary thing, a low, rhythmic crackle against the vast, silent canvas of the northern Utah foothills. In years past, It was late autumn, the air sharp with the scent of pine and an impending frost. I was weary from the road, the kind of weariness that settles not in the bones but in the soul, demanding quiet and reflection. My own face, reflected in the shallow nearby pool, was all sharp angles, my cleanly shaved head contrasting with the wild, full white beard that had become my own personal timepiece. My clothes were simple, dark wool and leather that had seen every mile that I had myself. Next to me, passing the ancient, chipped canteen of amber liquid, was Lawrence Atticus Goon. To the road, he was simply L.A. Goon , a name now spoken in whispers of pure, unadulterated fun. He looked, as always, like a paradox: a man whose body was...

Corporal Harding's Despair A warning on the ravages of war... The Spanish Fork train station, now a slumped skeleton of weathered wood and broken glass that locals call Brandt Hall, stands as a decaying monument to a time the modern world has largely forgotten. The wind whistles through its broken panes like a mourning hymn, a sound that seems to carry the echoes of the railway workers' club that briefly occupied its bones, the laughter, the poker games, and the steaming coffee pots. But before the old timers settled in, the station, once a proud stop along a bustling spur line, bore witness to a tragedy so profound it split time in two. Now, its rusty, half-buried tracks speak only of memory, and it is here, in the decaying quiet of the old station, that two lonely spirits keep an eternal, heartbreaking vigil. The air around the dilapidated platform often feels heavy, cool even on a summer’s day. It’s the lingering chill of Corporal James 'Jimmy' Harding, a WWI do...

 The serpent crown of Isis  A tale of beauty and ambition told by The Rogue Trader Greetings traders, and welcome to my humble bodega of curiosities and tales most grim! I am the Rogue Trader, your purveyor of the peculiar, merchant of the macabre, here to spin a Tale that will chill your very marrow. Tonight, we delve into the shadowed heart of a city where ambition breeds like vermin and despair clings to the cobblestones like a shroud. A city, you might say, where the very streets coil and slither like a great, hungry serpent, ever ready to swallow the unwary. Our story begins, as many do, with a whisper of longing, a sigh exhaled into the oppressive air of a forgotten room. Emily, a subtle beauty, with eyes the color of bruised plums and hair like a midnight storm cloud, stood before a cracked, silver-backed mirror. The fractured glass distorted her reflection, splintering her already fragile self-perception into a thousand jagged pieces. Tracing a finger over...

  The Long Hollow Howler A campfire tale by The Rogue Trader I was riding Highway 6 that evening, winding my way up through Spanish Fork Canyon, just east of the Manti turnoff. The sun was bleeding out across the ridgeline, and the canyon walls glowed like old copper. I’d been on the road since sunrise, chasing stories and trading trinkets, and figured I’d earned myself a quiet supper. Pulled off near a bend where the scrub thins out and the pines start whispering, laid out a blanket, and cracked open a tin of beans. That’s when I saw it, The rectangular brown DOT sign for Long Hallow Canyon. It wasn’t marked on any map I carried, and I’ve carried plenty. Just a narrow cut in the rock, half-hidden by shadow and sagebrush, like the land itself was trying to forget it existed. But I’ve never been one to ignore a good mystery. So I packed up my beans, slung my satchel, and followed the trail in. Almost immediately, I noticed something strange. Along the path...

  Irene A tale as it happened to The Rogue Trader They say ghosts are just memories with nowhere to go. I say some memories remember you back. Decades back, I was seventeen, maybe eighteen, working on scenery for the fall play up in the top floor of the old Wells Fargo building, the space had once been an old community hall. Back then, it was our playhouse, Palace Playhouse. The high school drama troupe used it for everything: rehearsals, set builds, whispered crushes, and bad lighting cues. That year, like many others over the 80 years prior, Peach Days was in full swing outside, parades, booths, music drifting through the open windows, and activities stretching west down forest street. But I was inside, alone, painting a backdrop of twisted orchard trees under a harvest moon. The festival was a riot of color and noise. Families strolled past with paper baskets of cobbler and fried dough. Excited kids darting between booths with sticky fingers and wide eyes, wat...

  The Bridge on the Bear A tale retold by The Rogue Trader It was back in the fall of ’85, or maybe ’86. The Bear River Valley air was already biting down the neck of my denim jacket, carrying that high-desert crispness you only get where the Wasatch mountains meet the wide-open plain. I was gaining the years, but in my head, I was still the quick-witted kid who could talk his way out of a bear trap. I had set up a little roadside market on promitory toad, just west of the I15 overpass along the river itself. I was selling Native silver and some truly unique, some might say cursed, European glassware. But the real currency I collected was the road itself: the stories. I was gathering tales for my personal collection, and the local kids kept pointing me down a back road toward a forgotten iron relic. “You gotta see the Cry Baby Bridge, mister,” they’d say, all wide eyes and nervous giggles. “It’s out by Bear River City. The one that’s not for cars anymore.” I never d...