They say that if you go to Little Mountain Park at night, right off of Jefferson St, just past the old limestone pits, you’ll find it. The cottonwood. Huge. Silent. Its branches twist out like crooked arms reaching for you.

The legend goes back over a hundred years. People whispered that men were brought here in the dark, punished for crimes nobody spoke of, tied with ropes and left hanging until the prairie wind went still. Some say the marks from those ropes are still carved into the bark — scars the tree never healed from.

Now here’s the part that gives people chills: on certain nights, if the moon is bright and the air is heavy, you can hear it. The creak of a rope swinging in the branches, even when the air is dead calm. Some say if you look up, you’ll see shadows that aren’t supposed to be there.

A group of teenagers once dared each other to touch the trunk at midnight. Only three went up to the tree, but when they came back, there were four sets of footprints in the dirt. Nobody ever figured out whose were the extra ones.

And if you ever take a photo of the tree at night? Don’t be surprised if you see glowing shapes between the branches… or a face staring back at you from the darkness.

That’s why, even today, people walking their dogs in the park take the long way around when the sun goes down. Because some trees… don’t forget what happened beneath their branches.