Spooks of the High Trails

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
After the California Gold Rush in 1849, strangers from across the world came to find their fortunes. Instead many found an ignominious death, and it's no wonder they don't lay quiet in their secret graves.

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The ghost of a murdered miner seeks revenge against his killer

SAN FRANCISCO, 1889
There was a boarding house on Commercial Street in San Francisco kept by "Red Pat" Riley. It was here that a hardened detective told the story of seeing a ghost. ​

The detective said that many years before, Red Pat's house welcomed newcomers to the city, and many fights took place under the roof of the boarding house. Many of the brawlers found themselves in the morgue by the day's end.

One night a miner was killed at the boarding house. Someone stabbed him in the chest with a Bowie knife. He'd been robbed, and the city buried him in a pauper's grave. The next night after the man was murdered, the person who stayed in the room, roused everyone in the house with shrieks. They found him convulsing on the floor.

Red Pat had not mentioned anything of what had taken place only 24 hours before. What the man described when he recovered, raised the hair on everyone's head. He said he woke up in the night to hear someone talking. He sat up and thought at first the conversation came from the room next door. Then he realized whoever spoke was in the room with him. A shadowy outline convinced him of this fact. The talking ceased, and all was still. Suddenly he heard the noise of a struggle, a cry and a body falling to the floor. He lost consciousness after this.

Red Pat thought a rival was putting the man up to it by spreading stories of a haunting in his boarding house. He asked the detective to investigate if this was the case.

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San Francisco boarding house c.1901

The detective visited the boarding house and asked if anyone knew the murdered miner. A young man had traveled with him from the mines. The detective asked him to stay all night in the room with him, and identify if indeed it was the miner's apparition after all.

​That night both men sat in the room where the miner was killed. They shared some liquor, and the young miner drank so much he passed out. The detective began to doze, when the sound of someone talking brought him to full wakefulness.

Even though the lamp was lit he could not identify where the voice was coming from, until he looked towards the bed. Someone was lying in it. The detective recognized the murdered miner was the person in the bed. He pulled out his revolver and rapped the table with it, but the ghost did not look at him. He tried to wake his companion but he was too drunk. Then the ghost started to speak of his fortunes at the mines, and he made a comment that there was enough for both of them to become rich. He bade an unknown party good night, turned around as if to go seek his bed. Then the figure on the bed convulsed as if he struggled with an assailant. His clenched hands beat the air, and then he stood up still fighting an invisible foe. It appeared someone had him about the throat.

​The reenactment did not cause any noise. Then he grabbed his side and fell on the bed. In the meantime, the young miner had come awake and all he could do was look in horror and fury at the apparition. He went to the bed trying to touch it. Then the detective accused him of murdering the miner. Later the young miner, named Joe Munson went on to confess to the crime. The ghost was never seen again.

​In 1894, a miner told of an encounter he had with with an "old boy — an old '49er".

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Last Saturday I was camped on the South Yuba, a little above Washington, near the mouth of Scotchman's Creek. In the afternoon, having nothing better to do, I went up to a large pool on the creek where I had seen a fine lot of trout and began fishing.

After I had been engaged in this sport for about half an hour I began to have a feeling that someone was near at hand behind me. I turned about and saw standing within three or four paces an old man dressed as a miner. He was a man at least six feet in height, broad chested and stalwart. A long gray beard reached far down his breast and he had but one eye.

The man gazed at me very intently—in a fixed sort of way, I thought. HIs lips parted and he seemed about to speak, but instead he began to stroke his beard, first with one hand then the other, all the time gazing at me in a queer, wistful way.

I thought he was some miner working on the creek and was about to speak to him when I felt a trout take my hook. I turned and gave such a jerk to my rod that I flung the fish quite behind me.

Following the trout with my eyes as I thus threw it out I saw it strike full in the breast of the old man, pass through him and fall to the ground. At the same moment the miner disappeared. He seemed to fade out just when the trout reached and passed through his image.

Now what I saw was either the ghost of some old miner or I am getting to be wrong in the head. Why the shape of such a man should have appeared to me I cannot understand. I have never known such a man in California, yet there seemed to be something familiar to me in his general appearance.

The ghost of Jake Fisher

This was supposedly the ghost of Jake Fisher, who was known to have mined for years in the hills on both sides of Scotchman's Creek—at Alpha and Omega, just below the rich Brookshire claim.

His old, rotten cabin could be found near the mouth of the creek on the west bank. It had been smashed by a big pine tree that lay across the middle of it. This was how he died, pinned under the tree while he slept. His was buried just above the cabin on the hillside. His cabin was searched, but there was no clue to where he had hid his "pile". His family in Illinois were notified of his death.

​Another experience was described this way:

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Last fall a year, about this time, I was digging down out in the mountains on an old trail that leads down from the headwater of the Feather. It was in the afternoon and hot as blazes, for I was on the north side of the river and close up by a wall of rock that poured more heat onto my head than come out of the sun. At last I got down to a big flat and was glad to halt at a spring in the shade of some willows.

There was some nice patches of grass on the spring branch for my old burro Turk, so I unpacked him, turned him loose and sat down in the shade to a lunch of cold slap-jacks and bacon.

I'd finished my lunch and was taking a pull at my pipe when I see a man coming up the trail. It was an old man with a long, gray beard. He had on a regular miner's rig, with a six-shooter slung to his belt. I was kind of astonished for I hadn't supposed there was any man within twenty mile of the spot. So I sat and waited for him to come up to the shade and water. 

But when he was within fifty yards of me he halted. Then he faced about, and looking to the north, started across the flat. Turk then got sight of him, stopped feeding and stood gazing at him with his ears stuck forward.

Out about the middle of the flat, a hundred yards away the old fellow stopped and stood looking down at the ground. I thought he was waiting for his partner to come up. I turned and looked down the trail, but no one hove in sight. Turning again to the old man I found him gazing straight at me. As I looked up he lifted his right hand and beckoned me to come to him. "What do you want?" says I.

Not a word does the old fellow say, but again he beckons to me. I rose to my feet and then I could see some dirt piled up as if at a prospect hole. Thinks I, the old chap may have struck it rich. "What is it?" I sung out.

The old fellow made no answer, but still beckoned me to come out to him.

I concluded to go and see what the old coon wanted. As I moved toward the old fellow he began to disappear. He seemed to be sinking into the ground. When he had sunk to the waist I halted, for I didn't like the looks of the business. While I stood still the old man didn't move, but as soon as I started on down he sank till I could only see his head and shoulders.

I had got up so near the old chap that I could plainly see the stare of his cold and fishy eyes. Cold chills run up and down my back and my hair began to raise. There was something so unwholesome in the steady stare of his glassy eyes that I began to crawfish.

Then was developed a new feature. As I moved back foot by foot up rose the old man, inch by inch he come up till I could almost see the tops of his boots. Then holding on to me with his cold glassy eyes, he again beckoned me to come to him.

I was about to take to my heels when a thought struck me 'What a fool I am," says I. 'There's a ladder in the shaft that the old creature is moving up and down upon'.

It still struck me that the old chap's eyes were no good, but I concluded that he might be built that way. So I again moved forward. Down, down went the old man as I went toward him, abut as I thought he was on a ladder I marched on.

At the spot where the old fellow disappeared I found an old shaft, but no ladder was in it—not even a notched pole. It looked about twenty-five feet deep, and not a thing was in it on which any human being could have stood. At the bottom was not a thing but some loose dirt, a dead rabbit or two, and one side a little puddle of water.

Soon I began to walk backwards, keeping my eyes on the shaft. When I had moved back a rod or two up came the old man's head the eyes staring more than ever. I shuffled backwards till the thing stood waist height above the ground, then I turned tail and made the gravel fly till I was back at the spring.

Turning toward the shaft I saw the old man of the hole standing as if on top of the ground. As I stood gazing with cold sweat pouring out of me, the old chap lifted his right hand and beckoned to me as at first.

'No you don't, old cock' says I; 'I've got my dose.'

Looking about for old Turk, I found he'd got sight of the thing and was working his ears and staring at it. In less than a minute I had Turk's pack on his back and was raising a dust down the trail.

The old creature at the shaft followed me with his eyes, turning his head like an owl, till I got to where the trail pitched down from the flat into a tremendous canyon, and as I turned for a last look he raised his hand and beckoned me back. At that moment, so help me Moses if my old burro didn't twist his head round, stick his ears forward at the old man at the shaft and give a rousing yee-haw!

'Git up Turk, you tormented old fool!' yells I giving the old jack a kick in the rear and down we dove into the shadow of the big canyon. And more than once as we went down at the sound of a little racket behind me  I came near jumping clean over my old burro's back.

Now what do you make of that? If I wasn't sunstruck and crazy I said just what I've told you. Besides old Turk saw the same thing and it ain't likely he too was sunstruck.

​It was believed the old miner had fallen into the shaft and died in the hole. He wanted someone to find his bones, and perhaps give him a Christian burial.