The Ghost of Mink Creek

Graveyard at Mink Creek, "Logan Herald Journal," October 29, 1976, via Newspapers.com

The following ghost story was, unfortunately, never fully investigated, so it is hard to tell how much of it is solid fact, and how much is folklore.  However, it’s an intriguing enough tale that--with the above caveats--I wanted to give it a niche in the hallowed halls of Strange Company HQ.

Some time around 1900, a family named Burrell was living in Mink Creek, a small rural community in Idaho.  Rumors began spreading that there were some sort of weird and ominous happenings going on in the family’s log cabin.  Intrigued by these stories, a group of threshers who were working nearby decided to turn amateur paranormal investigators, and invited themselves over to spend the night at the Burrell place.  The family told them that all would be well as long as a lamp kept burning.  After a couple of hours of boredom, the threshers called for the lamp to be extinguished.  The oldest Burrell daughter protested, “No, it will come!”  However, the threshers got their way.  As reassurance, two men held her arms, while the rest surrounded her bed.

“It” indeed soon came.  From a distance up the canyon, everyone heard “a soft wailing sound like a high wind.”  The sound became closer and louder, until by the time it reached the cabin, it had become a terrifying roar.  The Burrell girl began moaning and trembling.  The horses outside began stamping in agitation.  A loud bang erupted in a corner of the cabin, followed by a swishing sound.  A “something” landed with a crash on the table.  The girl went into hysterics and fainted.

One of the men cursed whatever had invaded the cabin.  He instantly began to spasm, as if he was being shaken.  He began gurgling and begging to be let go.

Very wisely, the lamp was re-lit.  Everyone saw what seemed to be teeth marks on the girl’s arm, and bruising on the man’s throat, as if something had tried to choke him.  The Burrells told the man that this happened every night they failed to keep a light burning.

On another occasion, an unnamed man and his friend, Joe Johnson, expressed skepticism of these lurid ghost tales, so they also spent the night with the Burrells, just to see what might happen.  (What the Burrells thought about providing supernatural entertainment for their neighbors is unrecorded.)  The lights were turned out.  Everyone heard a sinister noise, and saw a shadow on the wall moving through the room.  Johnson grabbed his gun and gave the shadow a dose of buckshot.  Immediately afterwards, Johnson and the Burrell girl began screaming.  When the lamps came back on, finger marks were on both their throats.

The two doubters were, to say the least, convinced.

Eventually, the Burrells moved away from Mink Creek, but it was said the malevolent spirit followed them wherever they went.  Worse still, as each Burrell daughter married, the haunting was “inherited” by the next oldest girl.  Mr. Burrell, we are told, eventually died a “hideous death.”

As for why the family suffered such spiritual persecution, their neighbors talked about an old Danish couple who had lived in Mink Creek some time earlier.  Deciding that America wasn’t to their liking, the pair saved enough money to return to their home country.  Mr. Burrell volunteered to drive them to the train station.  However, their relatives in Denmark reported that the couple had never arrived.  In fact, they were never seen again.  The supposition was that Burrell had stolen their money and murdered them.  The hauntings began very soon after the couple vanished.  Possible evidence for this story emerged some years later, when during the construction of a factory, two skeletons were excavated.

To this day, local residents still speak of the “Mink Creek Ghost,” and believe the land where the Burrell cabin once stood is still haunted.