The Haunting of the Kane Cemetery

11/15/2024

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
All that's left of of the town of Kane, Wyoming is a railroad marker and old bridge abutments. It's an isolated place, which proved a harsh landscape to live in 100 years ago, and not all who were buried in the town cemetery found their eternal peace.

Town of Kane, WY c.early 1900s

With the backdrop of the Bighorn Mountains, what started out as a mining camp was located 12 miles east of Lovell, and two miles south of the Shoshone River. The settlement started in 1895 when Henry Lovell opened a post office. The railroad arrived in 1906, located on the Chicago, Quincy and Burlington Railroad. A small depot was built and used as a shipping point for sheep, cattle and lumber. The town grew and became an important trading post for those who did not live near the luxuries of a bigger town.

Officially the town was established in 1912. It was named after Riley Kane, who himself was a perplexing mystery. He did not know his real age since his parents died when he was a small child, and he was adopted by strangers. Riley Kane didn't count his age until he was between 12 to 15 years old. Based on the estimate he gave of his age, when he died in 1914 at the ranch of Robert A. Rath, he was about 101 years old. He had spent most of his life prospecting in the mountains, and his granite marker at the Shell Cemetery was raised by his fellow freemasons.

Within 20 years the town had a bank, two general stores, two hotels, a motel, a dance and pool hall, and a school. No liquor was ever served at the town.

Nearby was the Kane Ferry, the only crossing of the Bighorn River north of Greybull.

Kane, WY near railroad track c.2020

Like many frontier towns, settlers came from different parts of the country. Such was the story of James Flemon Waters who married Luella van Alstine in 1898. They were both from Ohio; he was 30 years old and she was 26. She'd married once before in 1891 to Ulysses Grant Hill, however it was a short-lived marriage, which produced a daughter named Hazel who was born in 1892. She would go on to adopt her step-father's surname of Waters.

The couple settled in the town of Kane and had three children of their own, but perhaps it was heartbreak that killed Luella in 1907, since her firstborn child Hazel died two years before. Poor Hazel's parents seemed to have been born under crossed stars, since her biological father Ulysses Grant Hill who had gone on to remarry, but continued to live in Iowa, died in 1911 after being run over by a train.

After the death of Luella, James Waters married the following year a woman 16 years his junior. No doubt he sought not only a wife, but a mother for his young daughters. Her name was Hannah Snider, but she went by her middle name of Matilda.

The family lived on their Wyoming ranch, and it's unknown if James Waters suspected his bride would turn out to be the most unfitting of mothers. The marriage was fruitful, and by March, 1921 they had seven children, and Matilda was pregnant with an 8th child.

Matilda waited until her husband was gone to visit his married daughter, to do the unthinkable. As James was returning he heard shots ring out. The doors were locked and the shades were drawn. He had to break down the door to gain entry.

In one version he found his wife already dead on the floor, in another she had shot herself in the chest but she was still alive, and he had to "drop her". She had killed four of her children, and wounded the two oldest.

What's left of Kane, WY c.2020 (Source-MaryFLICKR)

At the inquest James Waters revealed that Matilda had brooded profoundly over the death of Mary, their one-year-old daughter who died in 1920. What was more telling is that before "the birth of each child she had been irrational for varying periods." She had been "confined for a time in a Nebraska sanitarium but was released in 1920 as cured." James said Matilda had made threats to kill the children and herself before the tragedy, and sadly he had not believed her.

Matilda and the four children were buried in Kane Cemetery at Big Horn County. Present day it is part of the Big Horn Canyon National Recreation Area.

Described as a Big Horn Basin pioneer James Flemon Waters died in 1953, at the age of 85, never having to suffer again the death of any of his other children, as they died in old age.

By then, the little town of Kane was on its way to becoming a ghost town. In 1965, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation condemned the town to make way for Yellowtail Reservoir.

Kane, WY

None are sure when the sighting of the Blue Lady at the Kane Cemetery started. This is supposed to be Matilda Waters searching for her murdered children. There are reports of a blue light around the cemetery, and it's also been sighted crossing the road.

The cemetery was in use since 1903. Some families lived in Ionia, a small Mormon settlement about a mile and a half from the graveyard, others were residents of Kane. The main economy for the area was growing sugar beets for the Great Western Sugar Company in Billings, Montana. There were also ranches that ran cattle.

In 2009, the Kane Cemetery was vandalized between Halloween and November, 13. Thirty-one gravesites were desecrated. Some were pushed over, some broken and others were spray-painted.

But perhaps there are other restless spirits who could be to blame for the eerie happenings at Kane Cemetery.

In 1917, Fred Metcham (possibly Meacham) was found near death in front of the house of W. Stackhouse in Lovell. Metcham, 45, was his employee, and was found with a knife wound in the back. This injury had caused him to bleed to death.

Stackhouse said that Metcham was "crazed with liquor" and that he appeared to be insane and battered his own head, tore off his clothes and eventually caught himself on a wire, which is what inflicted the wound in his back.

W.F. Stackhouse, 40, was sent to jail and charged for the murder, however it would take 6 months before he was brought to trial for the murder of Fred Metcham. The outcome of the trial is unknown but it must have been in his favor, since in 1922 W. H. Stackhouse was president of the National Implement and Vehicle Association.

It's never specified where Metcham was buried but perhaps he lies buried in the one of the unnamed graves at Kane Cemetery.