Excerpts from Haunted Hikes
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YOSEMITE: First park ranger hears crying ghost This story reminds me of the last scene in Friday the 13th.

The Yosemite Valley Pioneer Cemetery is a small graveyard. Only 36 of the 45 souls buried there have headstones. In the northwest corner, underneath the shade of five evergreens, a large but otherwise unpretentious hunk of granite marks the grave of the man some consider to be the first park ranger, Galen Clark, who became the park’s first civilian guardian in 1867.

In September 1857, Galen Clark went on “a long tramp” to Grouse Lake, a small alpine lake “eight miles from the present site of Wawona.” While taking a break by the shore, Clark heard a “distinct wailing cry, somewhat like a puppy when lost.” He guessed that the cry was from a dog the Indians had left behind.

That night, Clark joined a band of Indians at their hunting camp and asked them about the sound he had heard. Here, in Clark’s own words, is what they told him.

“They replied that it was not a dog—that a long time ago an Indian boy had been drowned in the lake, and that every time anyone passed there he always cried after them, and no one dared go into the lake, for (the boy) would catch them by the legs and pull them down and they would be drowned. I then concluded that it must have been some unseen waterfowl that made that cry, and at that time I though that the Indians were trying to impose on my credulity, but I am now convinced they fully believed the story they told me.”

 Would you like to see GROUSE LAKE? Haunted Hikes has maps and trail descriptions to this and many other mysterious places in Yosemite.

BANFF:  Canadian spin

The Stoney Indians already had a name for the largest lake in Banff National Park. They called it m’nesto or “Cannibal Lake.” But this didn’t look good on the brochures. So, in 1888, the Canadian government renamed the jewel-toned waters Lake Minnewanka, a euphemistic, Disneylandesque title today’s finest political spin masters can appreciate. You see, Minnewanka means “Lake of the Water Spirit," which sounds pleasant and inviting yet, ever so vaguely, continues to honor the ancient Stoney Indian belief that a giant half-man, half-fish, flesh-eating demon lives in the lake.

Lake Minnewanka flows east into Ghost Lakes and beyond to Devil’s Gap. How did the Ghost Lakes get their names? Well, that depends on who you ask. Some say the ghost of Ghost Lakes was a white mustang the Native Americans could never catch. Another legend claims two Indian tribes fought a battle near where the Ghost and the Bow Rivers meet. Some of the slain were buried on Deadman Hill, and following the battle, a phantom was seen walking up and down the river bank, hard at work at his new hobby—collecting the skulls of dead warriors.

The trail along the north shore of LAKE MINNEWANKA is a popular mountain biking route. Order Haunted Hikes for a  trail description and map.
 


BIG SOUTH FORK: A man of constant sorrow

We have to thank the Eminent Domain for many of the places we now enjoy as national parks. However, whenever the federal government takes land from people unwilling to give it up, whenever the government forces people to leave their homes, hearts are bound to be broken, and some spirits may never recover.

For more than 50 years, Oscar Blevins lived in a cabin, a simple long structure built in 1870, and farmed the grassy fields near Bandy Creek. In 1975, the government condemned Blevins’ property to include it into the newly established Big South Fork National Park. Thirteen years later, in 1988, Oscar Blevins died. An acquaintance of Mr. Blevins told ranger Howard Duncan that poor ole’ Oscar had “grieved himself to death over the loss of his farm.”

After Mr. Blevins passed away, park staff began to notice unusual things at the Blevins Farmstead. According to NPS cultural historian Tom Des Jean, more than one ranger reported getting the “willies” while at Oscar’s farm. One hot summer evening, a ranger was unsaddling a horse inside the corral behind the barn when his hair stood up on end. Someone was watching him. The ranger looked behind him. Just outside the barn stood an old fellow wearing bib overalls and a black slouch hat. The ranger hailed the man in the overalls and continued to unsaddle his horse. Then he carried the saddle to the barn so that he could chat with the elderly park visitor when he was done. But in the time it took the ranger to set the saddle down and come out of the barn, the old man had vanished.

The old man with the slouch hat appeared again sometime in the early 1990's. Early one morning, the Bandy Creek wrangler went to Oscar’s farm to pick up a horse and load it into a trailer. As the wrangler led the horse out of the barn, the horse stopped at the barn door and reared back. This behavior was out of character for this normally docile mare. Coaxing the horse with encouraging words, the wrangler pulled on the halter, but the mare absolutely refused to cross the threshold of the barn door. Suddenly the wrangler’s scalp began to prickle. Feeling a presence, the wrangler looked over his shoulder. Standing not more than 30 feet from the doorway of the Blevins cabin was an old man wearing bib overalls and a slouch hat.

“She won’t come out will she?” the old man said, sending chills down the wrangler’s spine and causing the mare to fight the lead. Returning his attention to the horse, the wrangler grappled with the desperate animal. As soon as he got the mare under control, the wrangler looked around for the old man, but he was nowhere to be found.

He never claimed to have seen a ghost, but the wrangler told rangers the experience had rattled him. Ranger Howard Duncan described the wrangler, who is now a Special Agent with the DEA, as “a fellow who does not frighten easily.”

I don't blame Oscar Blevins for haunting this outstanding yet under-rated park. I also love the Big South Fork! My father and grandfather live just outside the park boundary, and many of my ancestors are buried in small cemeteries nearby.


C & O CANAL: Knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door

Built between 1828 and 1850, the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal was a heavily used water highway. Until 1924, goods were transported between Washington, D.C. and Cumberland, Maryland via boats in the canals towed by mules on the towpath. Today, the 184-mile towpath is a linear park favored by hikers and cyclists.

Sometime during the Civil War, a Union soldier camping near Great Falls found gold flecks sparkling in a nearby stream, initiating a mini-gold rush to the area. In 1865, the Maryland Mine was opened. The gold was mined, off and on, until a series of odd and unfortunate events shut down the mine in 1908.

On June 15, 1906, at 10:45 p.m., miners took a break inside a shed just outside the mine. The men were preparing to set a charge of dynamite in one of the mine’s 500-foot tunnels. While sipping from a bottle of liquor, one man absent mindedly placed his helmet, which had a candle-lantern attached, next to a box of dynamite another miner had placed on the bench. The candle lit the fuse and the miners rushed out of the building. One miner, Charles Eglin, was killed in the explosion.

Strange things began to happen after that. First, a draft horse, which had worked the mine many times before, suddenly refused to enter the gates. Every time this horse was brought near the property, it would rise up up and paw at the air. Then miners began to hear knocking noises and unaccounted for footsteps coming up behind them in the dark recesses of the mine.

Since medieval times, miners have told tales of “little miners” who lived under the earth. Germans called them Berggeister or “mountain ghosts.” The Berggeister could be good or bad, hurting or helping miners. In North America these spirits were known as “Tommy Knockers” because they made knocking noises. Some believed Tommy Knockers were the souls of dead miners trying to warn the living of danger. Others believed the Tommy Knockers were portents of death, and the first miner to hear the knocking would soon die.

Pick, pick, pick
is the last awful sign. 
For whoever hears it
will be the next in line.
---Cornish miner song

One night after Charles Eglin’s death, the night watchman of the Maryland Mine, heard footsteps coming up the gravel path to the office door. According to a documented historical account, the watchman heard knocks on the door, but when he opened it, no one was there. Another evening, the same watchman was checking on the mine when he encountered “a ghostie-looking man with eyes of fire and a tail ten feet long” crawling out of the shaft. The demon ran into the forest dragging its tail behind him. After that, the watchman told his boss, “I ain’t doin’ that job no more.”

After the watchman quit, the foreman couldn’t find anyone brave enough to fill the position. In 1908, the mine closed.

Want to see where the Tommyknocker came out of the MARYLAND MINE? Haunted Hikes shows you how to get there.

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