The Legend of the girl in the woods
Anna Marie and her dog Peppy
Long before Festive Farmstead opened its gates
—before the hayrides, before the lights, before the laughter—this land was quiet.
Untamed. Just woods, fields, and a scattering of old trails worn by time and footsteps long forgotten.
Anna Marie lived with her family in a house near the edge of the woods, on the banks of Spring Creek. When Anna Marie was 1 year old, she was gifted a puppy that she named Peppy, she loved her little dog; an eager mutt with a tail that never stopped wagging.
The legend begins when she was no older than ten, always seen with her faithful dog. They were inseparable. Every morning she’d run barefoot through the fields, the dog at her heels, giggling through the tall grass and hiding in the trees.
Anna Marie & Peppy
One late autumn afternoon, the dog darted off after something. Some say it was a deer. Others say it was nothing at all—just a strange pull into the forest. The girl called for him. Nothing. So, she followed into the woods. And she never came out. A storm rolled in that night. Thunder shook the skies. Her family searched through the night for Anna Marie. Neighbors combed the woods for days. They found broken branches, tiny footprints, and the sound of rushing creek water—but no sign of the girl or the dog.
Eventually, the search ended. People moved on. But the land didn’t. Since then, strange things have been whispered about these woods. Some say, on a warm sunny afternoon, you might hear the soft patter of paws behind you. You might even catch a giggle in the wind—light and innocent, like a child playing just out of sight. Others swear that animals—especially dogs—will freeze near the edge of the trees. Some bark wildly, some refuse to go forward, ears pinned back and eyes locked on something invisible. One farmer swore his dog vanished right there, gone in a blink, as if it had been called away.
But the nights are when things change. The laughter stops. The woods feel colder than they should. People riding the hay wagons have claimed to hear a single, sharp scream echo through the trees—far off, but unmistakably human. A few say they’ve seen movement, a white figure in the distance, standing still among the trunks. When they turn to look again, she’s gone.
Photo by a local woman claiming to be Anna Marie
One woman insisted, until the day she died, that the girl appeared in a photo she took near those woods. Others swear all you can see is just trees and tree stumps. Another old man swears he saw her walk out of the woods years later—grown up and silent. But nobody believed him either.
Then there’s the dog. A few years back, a teenager said he saw a shadowy dog standing by the creek bed, staring at him with eyes that didn’t reflect the light. It didn’t move, didn’t blink. Just vanished. Another claimed something followed them back to their car—a soft bark that grew louder the faster they walked, only to stop the moment they drove off the property.
Folks have started calling her “The Girl in the Woods”. Some think she’s looking for her dog. Others believe she became something else in those woods, something tied to the land. There are even whispers she protects the trail—keeping visitors safe from darker things that linger deeper in the forest. Or... maybe she just wants to go home.
Whatever the truth is, if you ever visit Festive Farmstead and you hear a girl laughing... or a dog barking just ahead... don’t follow. And if you’re riding the hay wagon after dark—don’t look too long into the trees. She might be looking back.
