Our nightmare begins, as all bad dreams do, in the dark.

Those who first settled what would become America found a dark place covered by forest fields and woods, deep menacing woods.

The forest with a natural setting for terrifying tales told around the campfire,

and for the wicked creature strange beasts and devilish beings that spawned such tales.

Those who had walked those woods for centuries had their explanations for what cast the shadows that lurked at the edges of their campfires.

Not all those tales were tales of fear, but most of them were.

The First Nations people told stories of the ravenous windigo, the shape-shifting skinwalker, the Utkina, a horned

serpent, and the Thunderbird, the massive creature whose wing beats would alter the weather.

But soon the indigenous people faced a monster much greater than those that lived in the woods.

The pale-faced people with moon eyes who came from a distant place, greedy for land where

those who came first had dwelled for so long.

The new arrivals brought hunger, disease, and weapons that caused terror, violence, and death. They also arrived with a

religion that also warned of the monsters that lurked in the forest. But to the white settlers,

the dark things in the woods were not the stuff of legend and lore, but the very real workings of the devil, who had followed

them to the new world, or perhaps had been waiting for them here all along.

The men and women who came to these shores are recalled because of their bravery, their gods, and their dreams of freedom,

and shining cities they plan to build. But their dreams were also shrouded by their fear of witches,

monsters and diabolical creatures of evil, human, and otherwise.

Life was hard in those early settlements.

Hard work and prayer seemed to take up most of everyone's time.

And during the long hours of every day and especially the night, people lived in constant fear.

They feared hunger and disease and had a deep-seated terror of the

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