The word Schreiber in German means writer and for Carson Trapp, his hometown has become his title.
The 23-year-old, who works as a general labourer, caught the writing bug in 2022 while sweeping a parking lot for his boss at the time. And what manifested was his book, Paranormal Encounters from the North Shore and Beyond!
“I was listening to a bunch of paranormal podcasts and how they like to talk to authors about whatever books they read,” Trapp recalled during a December Zoom conversation. “Out of nowhere, I was like, ‘I could probably do that.’ And then I was like, ‘How would I do that?’”
About 223 pages and 50,000 words later, Trapp collected dozens of stories and wrote a book focused on the uncanny along the northern shores of Lake Superior.
Those stories, gathered from experiencers around the North Shore of Lake Superior and beyond, came together through community support.
“I wasn’t even sure when I first started how to really go about it,” he admitted. “I thought, I’ll just make a poster and see if I get any bites.”
He posted the ad in businesses in surrounding towns. He got a few responses, then decided to cast a wider net.
“I wanted the whole North Shore, so I emailed literally every single business I could find on Google Maps and was like, ‘Hey, if it’s possible, can you please put up my poster in your window?’” he recalled. “Quite a few businesses liked that idea.”
In the end, he gathered enough material for a book that ranges from gnomes and Bigfoot to Glimmer Men, mimics and UAPs.
One story that stood out involved a woman travelling from Pays Plat to Thunder Bay with her father and two-year-old in a truck. Along the way, they struck what she described as a “chameleon-like” creature resembling the alien Yautja from the Predator films in camouflage mode.
“It was physical because the truck ended up lifting up off its front tire where they hit it,” Trapp said.
Another memorable account came from a man in the United States who shared an encounter with Bigfoot in Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota.
“He was whistling and because he liked birds, he kept hearing it whistle back,” Trapp said. “At first he thought, ‘Oh, this is kind of neat.’ But when he stopped, it started sounding more frantic. He got unnerved and when he and his cousin were leaving, Bigfoot just came out of the woods.”
Trapp’s interest in the paranormal forms the backbone of the book, alongside a curiosity about what other writers have explored in the field.
“Every once in a while when I was little, little things may have happened where I was like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’” he said, adding that as a child he made a beeline for books about cryptids.
Now, Trapp is collecting more stories for a possible second book, expanding his reach beyond the North Shore.
Paranormal Encounters from the North Shore and Beyond! hit bookstore shelves on Sept. 18 and is available through Amazon.
Photo courtesy the Schreiber Public Library