In the 1890s, a narrow gauge railroad
line twisted its way through a 30-mile trek near Cripple Creek, Florence and
Canon City in Colorado. This line serviced over 500 gold mines in the area and
at one time was one of the busiest in the country.
Today this old line is a part
of a road known as The Gold Belt Scenic
Drive.
This road slowly gains
elevation-- from 5,500 feet to 9,500 feet. It follows the same path as the
railroad did—and is mostly unpaved.
Phantom Canyon Road
The traveler within 30 miles
passes through two hand hewn railroad tunnels that were meticulously chiseled
out of the dense mountainous terrain by miners making room for the booming gold
industry.
Eight Mile Creek
This route also affords
spectacular views of mountain meadows, Ponderosa Pine forests, pinyon juniper
and cholla cactus. At the end are high desert grasslands.
A shorter stretch of this
scenic byway is known as Eight Mile Creek.
This part of the road winds throughcanyons
that rise and drop over 4,000 feet that hem the traveler in.
It was along this stretch of
the railroad track, where the engineers on this line excelled at navigating,
sharp, narrow turns and steep unguarded drop offs. It was here one railroad crew in the
early 1890s witnessed something they never forgot.
On a night run this crew was headed
toward Cripple Creek when they spotted a man walking alongside the tracks.
He wore a prison uniform with
his number clearly visible on his back.
The engineer, once the train
reached Cripple Creek, reported this sighting to the nearby Colorado State
Penitentiary in Canon City.
To his shock, he was informed
that the prisoner he and his crew had seen had been executed a few days before.
This story was told so often
that by the 20th century this canyon had been renamed, Phantom Canyon.
Higher tunnel on road.
This story served the locals
well for it attracted a stronger tourist industry to the area, after most of
the mines played out.
Phantom Canyon Road is
approximately a one-hour drive from Colorado Springs. It is located between the
cities of Florence and Victor. This road can be accessed from Highway 115 to
the south and 67 to the north.
Trestle near Eight
Mile Creek.
Warning: If you go in search
of this ghost, be advised, this road is a treacherous drive even during the day,
so it is not recommended people who are not used to driving mountainous roads
attempt this stretch at night.
Many of Rudyard Kipling’s
stories are set in India. This is not surprising for he spend his early
childhood in Bombay and later was a newspaper reporter in Lahore.
Kipling’s stories often
center on the relationships between men and women. He was a misogynist, for his male characters, often in the military, blame women for their own and
others shortcomings and misfortunes.
Considering the above
statement it goes without saying that Kipling’s stories are told from the
male’s point of view.
But despite this, it should
be mentioned that both men and women enjoy reading his stories.
Cover of collection
published in 1888
in India.
A favorite short story, The Phantom Rickshaw was originally
published in 1885 in a military Christmas annual. In the 1890s it was published
again in several popular collections.
Like many of his stories this
tale has a male narrator and includes a phantom or ghost. When the reader
begins this story they should not give up for it starts out slow but it
quickly builds once the narrator begins his self-serving tale of woe.
The story then firmly grips
the reader and takes them on an ever quickening ride that spirals into an
inevitable end. For this reason Rickshaw is sometimes compared to Edgar Allan
Poe’s Tell Tale Heart, which is shared here.
The story begins with Jack
Pansey, the main character who is found under the care of a doctor. He appears to be suffering from delusions caused by overwork—which
Jack most adamantly denies.
He retells his story to
convince his doctor of the true cause.
Three years earlier, while
sailing back to India from extended leave, Jack-- a British Indian official-- meets
an officer’s wife, the golden-haired Mrs. Agnes Keith-Wessington from Bombay.
The two fall in love and start a torrid affair.
But by the spring Jack’s
interest begins to wan. In Kipling’s words, his passion quickly dies, "his fire
of straw burnt itself out to a pitiful end.” So he goes about freeing himself from
her.
He is callus and brutal in
the way he informs Agnes that he is tired of their relationship. He basically
tells her he can’t stand her. He tells the doctor, “I was sick of her presence,
tired of her company, and weary of the sound of her voice.” Their future encounters are even worse.
However, Agnes doesn't take the hint and refuses to believe
they can’t live happily ever after. Jack meets and falls in love with a younger
woman, Kitty Mannering but the spurned Mrs. Wessington continues to appear in
his life--always insisting their parting was all just a "hideous mistake."
Kitty and Jack become engaged and Agnes now distraught, dies of a “broken heart,” as many
women in Victorian stories were wont to do.
At first Jack is relieved at
this news—for by this time he hates her.
But as they say: all's fair in love and war. There are many more twists and turns before this story ends. Read it and enjoy.
Rickshaws in Colonial India
The complete text of The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales—1st
edition, in a nice format, can be read at the Internet Archive. The following is a classic
radio show that highlights this Kipling story. It takes some dramatic license
with the original tale but is well worth the listener’s time.
Founded by Roger Bigold the 1st
Earl of Norfolk in the 1100s this priory today is in ruins. On this site
several witnesses have seen what appears to be the ghosts of black robed cluni
monks.
In 1937, terrified witnesses
heard the sounds of monks reading, chanting and singing in Latin.
In 1992, scared teenagers
hanging out at this old priory heard the clinking of keys before they watched
an apparition of a monk run straight past them.
However, the most famous
sighting occurred in 1987. Christian Jensen-Romer and three of his friends
watched through an archway as a monk descended some stairs. When they
approached, the monk and the stairs they were no longer there.
Christian Jensen-Romer
This group of male teens,
Jensen-Romer was 18 at the time, were driving through the town of Thetford in
Norfolk on their way to a wargames meeting.
The call of nature
interrupted their trip. As they looked for a loo or restroom they stumbled upon
the ruins at the end of one lane. A sign informed them that they were at “Thetford
Priory, a victim of Henry Vllls’ “Dissolution of the Monasteries” in the mid 16th
century.
It was a warm August night
around 8:30 p.m. They found a secluded spot behind a bush to relieve
themselves, as they turned to leave they looked at the ruins one last time.
Archway in ruins.
All four spotted a figure
that at first they thought was playing a joke. This figure was peering at them
from an upper window. Then the group saw this figure through an archway below.
It was wearing a black sheet that billowed behind it as it walked down a
staircase.
The group charged forward
toward the figure. Jensen-Romer remembers running up a few steps only to then
slam his head against the side flint wall. In the dark, the teens quickly
realized there was no staircase in the archway. The dark figure had disappeared
as well.
A feeling of coldness
enveloped the group and two of the teens became nauseous and threw-up. As they
left the priory, they eerily got the sense the stone walls were somehow
rebuilding themselves around them.
Thetford Priory
As they ran to their car it
felt as if the ground beneath their feet turned to wet sand and they all stated
their legs became unsteady. All four afterwards wrote down what they saw in the
archway.
Their accounts differed in
the description of the figure, but they all agreed it appeared to be a “black
robed figure that appeared to be a monk.” They also agreed that what they saw
was more than just a product of their fear.
Christian Jensen-Romer who
later became a writer and Parapsychologist states this experience changed how
he looks at the world. He understands why people claim to see ghosts.
He is not certain what they
saw that night—but all four men today state they did see something that was
“real.”
Below a program entitled, Ripples in Time met with these four
witnesses 10 years later at the priory. Three are scientists, and one is a psychologist today. They
recount what they saw in detail on this video.
Another witness to this phenomenon, Margaret and her daughter are residents of
Thetford. One warm summer’s day as they sat on a bench near the ruins they saw a
monk.
He had his head bent and his
arms where tucked in his habit. He glided by oblivious to their presence.
Margaret followed this figure around one wall only to find no one.
She admits she has never gone
near the ruins since.
One pamphlet in the town
tells stories of people trying to speak to this monk only to see the figure
vanish in front of their eyes instead.
Several of these encounters
point to the fact that this might be a Residual haunting but the four male teen’s
experience seems to be more a time slip.
Here is the video of the four
men, 10 years later, as they return to the Thetford Priory.
On September 7, 1900 a
hurricane quietly entered the Gulf of Mexico. By the next day this storm brought in winds of 150 mph, which hit the Galveston barrier island destroying the
town of the same name.
This hurricane known as The Great Storm is the deadliest *
natural disaster to hit American soil. 3,600 homes were destroyed and more than
10,000 men, women and children lost their lives.
* Historians consider it
worse than Katrina because of the number of fatalities.
At this time, Galveston, a bustling port town was one of the largest and wealthiest
cities in Texas. The future was bright for its 36,000 residents.
After 9:00 p.m. on September 8th
all this prosperity would be gone.
Among the dead where 10 nuns
and 90 of 93 children at St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum located on beachfront
property located outside the town.
St. May's Orphan Asylum--building on right girl's dorm.
These nuns were apart of the
Sisters of Charity that had established a Catholic infirmary in Galveston.
The orphans under their
charge were mostly children that lost their parents to Yellow Fever—so
eventually the orphanage connected to the hospital was moved outside of town to avoid this
disease.
Sister Elizabeth Ryan was in
Galveston on the morning the hurricane hit collecting supplies. Mother Gabriel
tried to convince her to stay at the hospital until the storm passed but she
refused for her supplies included food for that day’s supper at the orphanage. What Sister Elizabeth didn’t
know is that there would be no more suppers at St. Mary’s.
During the afternoon the
winds and rains increased, the tide rose higher, fierce waves crashed onto the
beach sending floodwaters ashore.
St. Mary’s consisted of two
large dormitories with balconies that faced the gulf. Both buildings sat behind
a row of sand dunes that were supported by Salt Cedar trees.
The tides began to erode
these dunes, one orphan who survived stated later he watched as the dunes
eroded, “as if they were made of flour.”
When the floodwaters reached
the dorms the nuns gathered all the children into the girl’s dormitory for it
was newer and the stronger of the two buildings.
At first they stayed in the first
floor chapel, the nuns had the boys and girls sing a French hymn Queen of the Waves, which fishermen sang
during storms—to keep the group calm.
Nuns and children at St. Mary's.
But as the water rose they
moved the group to the second floor where each nun tied clotheslines to their waist
and then attached 6 to 8 orphans to them with it.
Several of the older boys
went up to the roof. The children terrified now watched as the boy’s dorm was
lifted off its foundations and washed away.
A ship that was being tossed in the
storm hit their dorm--it lifted their building up, the floor fell out from beneath their feet and
the roof crashed down trapping them in the water.
One survivor,
Will Murner
aged 13.
Only 3 orphan boys survived,
William Murney, Frank Madera and Albert Campbell. They were washed away and
woke later in a tree. They clung to this tree for a day before a small boat
from town rescued them.
Several of the nun’s bodies
were found later with children still attached via the clotheslines. One of the
surviving boys witnessed a nun reassure two small children, “I will never let
go.” She was found with both children still firmly grasped within her arms.
The nuns and children were
buried where they were found.
Sisters found with children
tied to them.
Some of damage.
On this terrible day, when
the wind and gulf waters met at 6:00 p.m. the town was completely flooded—whole
blocks were washed away within minutes.
At 7:30 p.m. the main tidal
wave struck the south shore, it reached 15 to 20 feet.
In 1994, on the anniversary
of The Great Storm Texas placed a historical marker at the section of the
seawall, built after the storm, where St. Mary’s once stood. Descendants of the survivors attended and
an all sang, Queen of the Waves.
Marker for orphanage
above seawall
Today, many believe that the spirits of small orphan victims haunt two structures where St. Mary’s once stood.
Employees at the Seawall
Walmart have reported: misplaced toys, missing pallets of toy inventory,
phantom children’s laughter and cries for help.
Seawall and Walmart nearby.
One former employee recalls
the time she heard a little girl calling for her mother. She went to find the
lost child to help. She searched the toy department calling out but received no
response.
Other’s hearing this child’s cries, both employees and customers joined in the search but the child was
never found and the cries eventually stopped.
Ten years ago this store was
considered the most haunted spot on the island. Several news stories
highlighted it.
Hotel Galvez
The Hotel Galvez was built,
in 1911 on the beach where St. Mary’s once stood. This hotel known as Queen of the Gulf has hosted U.S.
presidents and celebrities as well as the ghosts of several small children.
Over the years many guests
have reported poltergeist activity including: doors opening and closing and
lights turning on and off by themselves. Several witnesses have seen glimpses
of the orphans that linger.
Today, Galvestonians often
see a figure dressed in an old-fashioned nun’s habit walking along the shore.
Here is a local news report
about the anniversary, the storm and St. Mary’s.
The following video shows
Galveston before and after this Category 4 hurricane.