"...we should pass over all biographies of 'the good and the great,' while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows."
~Edgar Allan Poe

Monday, February 10, 2025

The Restless Skeleton of the Borrego Badlands

Photo via gotoborregosprings.com


Whisper in my ear that there is a U.S. State Park which has long been haunted by an enormous lantern-bearing skeleton, and, naturally, all I can do in response is hop up and down like an over-caffeinated kangaroo and shriek, “Blog post, here we come!” 

Southern California’s Borrego Badlands are ideal surroundings for bizarre folklore.  It’s a 20 mile wide, 15 mile long section of the enormous Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.  Although the area was under the sea in ancient times, today it is a mass of arid, desolate arroyos reminiscent of photos of the Martian landscape.  Having visited the place myself, I can attest that it has its charm, albeit of a stark, almost eerie fashion.

Our ghostly legend began with a prospector known as “Charley Arizona.”  Some time in the 1880s, Charley was traveling from Yuma, Arizona to San Diego.  One night, he camped near the appropriately named Superstition Mountain, about four miles southeast of Borrego.  He was awakened by the sound of his burros getting very agitated about something, and he went to see what was troubling them.  Some two hundred yards away, Charley saw a light like a lantern shining through the darkness.  Surrounding that light was a huge skeleton, about eight feet tall, staggering seemingly aimlessly through the desert.  Charley could "hear his bones a-rattlin!"  A few minutes later, the creature climbed a ridge and disappeared from view.

Two years later, two other prospectors camped in the same general area.  During the night, they were alarmed to see a flickering light going by in the distance.  One of the men insisted it was a tall skeleton carrying a lantern.  A few months later, the men were in Vallecito, California, when another prospector told them of having seen “a wandering stack of bones” in the badlands, carrying a light.  Like Charley, he thought the skeleton was just wandering around pointlessly.

Once talk of this peripatetic skeleton began circulating, more sightings emerged, some of them more reliable than others.  Two men went into the badlands, determined to see the strange being for themselves.  After three nights of hunting it down, they were not disappointed.  They chased after the skeleton as it wandered in the general direction of Fish Mountain.  In his 1940 book of Southwest folklore, “Golden Mirages,” Philip A. Bailey quoted one of the men as saying, “it would gallop up a hill with remarkable energy and then stop and putter around, walking in circles as though undecided what to do.  Then it would stalk majestically down the hill and across the plain, only to end up in some canyon busily tramping around.”  One of the men shot at the strange being, which didn't seem to trouble it in the least.  The men trailed after the skeleton for some three miles before it disappeared from view.  Other visitors to the badlands reported seeing a strange moving glow in the distance, without seeing the skeleton itself.

As for the interesting question of why Borrego was home to a giant wandering skeleton, most prospectors believed it was the spirit of a man who had died searching for the elusive Phantom Mine.  (Bailey commented, “The mine is known to exist, and its exact location is common knowledge, but for some inexplicable reason no one can find it.”)  Others theorized the apparition was of one Thomas “Pegleg” Smith, discoverer of a now-lost gold mine.  A mysterious ball of light has often been seen in the vicinity of Squaw Peak, but opinions vary about whether or not it’s connected to our well-lit bones.

In any case, I now have a strong urge to pack my bags and head back to those badlands for a spot of skeleton-hunting.  Who’s with me?

Friday, February 7, 2025

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn


Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Let's get this show on the road!



Who the hell was Madame Montour?

What the hell is the Baltic Sea Anomaly?

The mystery of some ancient seated burials.

The lineage of Harold Godwinson.

The unsolved murder which inspired a journalism award.

The U.S. Army's largest urban battle.

The clergyman and the poltergeist.

New research on the authors of the Bible texts.

Secret tunnels and a forgotten sketch by Leonardo da Vinci.

The millionaire who wants to create a "new Atlantis."

The most remote operation of the Crimean War.

A chaplain's eccentric personal life.

How Robert Burns became the Scottish national bard.

One of the more obscure members of the Georgian royal family.

Royal pet memorials.

My prediction:  This story gets debunked in 5...4...3...2...

Ancient toilets can be important!

The birth of the America's Cup.

Ancient rock art that tells a story.

The life of a 13th century sultana.

Jane Austen and degrees of separation.

The world's rarest pasta.

The "equation of cat motion," which proves that some physicists have way too much spare time on their hands.

A Parisian jazz queen.

A handy reminder:  You really don't want a proton beam through your head.

An early American code-breaking organization.

The bog body that solved a disappearance.

A case of "bloody butchery."

When tuberculosis was fashionable.

A visit to a Scottish castle.

Speaking of Scotland, they're currently having a spat over an alien abductee's pants.

And there's always the possibility that Alexander the Great became shark food.

The intellectual who tried to commune with angels.

The portrait which may show evidence of the artist's secret child.

Murder at a Pennsylvania City Hall.

The Tucson Artifacts Hoax.

The psychology of the extreme.

Shorter version:  Mars is weird.

We keep reevaluating Edgar Allan Poe.

More ancient beads than you can shake a stick at.

An underwater "lost city."

Two trips that ended tragically.

Self-help advice from a murder suspect.

A 1976 alien abduction.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a very unusual skeleton.  In the meantime, here's Ry Cooder.

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com



As I have mentioned a number of times before, some of the damnedest things happen in Wales.  The “South Wales Argus,” August 30, 1946:

An amazing story of a strange creature, half-man and half-horse, said to be haunting Blaenavon in the early hours of the morning, has been reported in detail to the police at Blaenavon. 

Mr. William Henry Davies, age 34, a miner at Kays Slope Colliery, who lives at 1 Forge Row, Cwmavon, has made a signed statement describing how he saw the creature running at terrific speed, apparently frightened by the light from his bicycle. 

The statement says that the incident occurred at 4:50 a.m. on Tuesday, while Mr. Davies was cycling home from work. On Cwmavon Road, near the turning to Twynmawr Road, he saw in the half light of dawn and with the aid of the light of his cycle, a creature which appeared to be a man except that it had a head similar to a small horse, and a flowing mane. 

Until Friday, he was reluctant to tell anyone except his wife about the experience, but on Friday morning decided to make a statement to Blaenavon police. 

Mr. Davies said:  “I have not the slightest doubt about what I saw.  I was riding down the hill and was only five yards from the creature when I saw it.  It was running very fast and my attention was drawn by the long hair which flowed over its shoulders.

“It had a small horse's head, just like that of a colt.  It ran up a side street, apparently to avoid me, and as I pulled up I heard a neigh.  It was not loud, but it was unmistakable.” 

Mr. Davies added that the creature appeared to be wearing a blue suit. When he went home he told his wife, but was afraid to tell his workmates at the colliery because he knew they would laugh at him and he was afraid of earning a nickname which might stick to him all his life. After thinking the matter over, however, he decided it ought to be reported to someone in authority. 

Blaenavon police told a “South Wales Argus” reporter that Mr. Davies had signed the statement, but as yet there is nothing further to be said. The matter is being dealt with in the ordinary way and routine inquiries will be made.

When interviewed by a reporter, Mr. Davies said there was no question of him having been drinking because he was a teetotaler.  In any case he was on his way home from work at the time.  He was satisfied in his own mind about what he saw and described the apparition faithfully in his statement to the police.

Monday, February 3, 2025

The Ghost of Augustus Peers; Or, How to Safeguard Your Own Corpse

Fort McPherson, circa 1900



Ghost lore is full of tales of spirits who are unhappy with the way their mortal remains were treated, so they make (generally unwelcome) appearances with the intention of setting things right.  One of the more famous examples of such stories had an appropriate setting: the wild, desolate land of 19th century North-West Canada.

Augustus Peers was a fur-trader who managed the Hudson Bay Company’s post at Fort McPherson, on the Peel River.  It was a lonely, bleak place less than 100 miles from the Arctic Ocean.  Peers was good at his job, well-liked by all, and had a seemingly happy domestic life with his wife and two children.

Despite these advantages, Peers was not happy at the Fort, for reasons that are lost to history.  Perhaps the isolation took its toll on his psyche, or it could have been that he had personal troubles that were never recorded.  Although he was a vigorous man of only 31, he took to brooding about death.  Peers told his friends that he was convinced he had not long to live, and when he did pass on, he insisted that he not be buried at Fort McPherson.  He was so miserable at the Fort, the thought of spending eternity there was intolerable.  Soon after making these remarks, he did indeed die suddenly, on March 15, 1853.  His supervisor, Roderick MacFarlane, gave Peers a temporary grave on the banks of the Peel River, until his widow could decide on a more permanent resting place.

She took her time about it.  It was not until 1859 that his spouse (who was now married to Peers’ successor at the Fort, Alexander Mackenzie) requested that her first husband’s body be reburied at Fort Simpson, some five hundred miles away.  Accordingly, in early 1860, MacFarlane had Peers exhumed--it was noted that the freezing temperatures had kept his body perfectly preserved--and the corpse was placed on a dog-sledge for the long winter journey.  The coffin proved to be so unwieldy, that Peers’ body was removed from it and secured onto the sledge with just the grave-wrappings.

On March 15--the seventh anniversary of Peers’ death--MacFarlane and his men settled for the night by a river bank.  It had been an unusually warm day for that time of year, which caused Peers’ long-frozen corpse to thaw slightly.  The dogs, who had yet to be fed, smelled fresh meat.  The hungry animals began surrounding the corpse, barking furiously in anticipation.  As the party went to investigate the disturbance, they all heard a voice shouting “Marche!” (a French word used in the North-West to control dogs.)  The animals immediately fell silent.  A member of the party who had known Peers said that it sounded exactly like his voice.

The journey continued without any further incident until three days later.  While the men were making camp, they again heard the same voice again yelling “Marche!”  In the freezing temperatures, they knew the dogs could not have scented the corpse again, but it was thought best to move the body nearer the camp overnight.  The following morning, the men found the tracks of a wolverine at the spot where they had originally left Peers’ remains.

MacFarlane’s party arrived at Fort Simpson on March 21st, 1860, and two days later, Peers finally found what was hopefully a more congenial resting place.  On the night before MacFarlane and his men set out to return to Fort McPherson, he suddenly woke up from a deep sleep to find the apparition of Augustus Peers staring down at him.  The man in the bunk opposite him saw it as well.  Both men could think of nothing better to do than pull the bed covers over their heads until morning.

In 1913, MacFarlane wrote an account about his uncanny experience, commenting that he regretted passing up his one opportunity to communicate with the dead.  Considering what loving care Peers’ spirit gave his corpse, I’m sure the late fur-trader regretted it too.