The Ghost on Grimes Creek

copyright 1999, by Lee M. Crane, Sr (March 1923 – October 2020)

THE GHOST ON GRIMES CREEK

 

A lot of people don’t believe in ghosts.

That’s understandable. Seeing is believing and few people have really seen the spirits of the departed, especially in North America.

Conditions suitable to produce sustenance for these entities are not frequently found in the United States or Canada. You see, ghosts are in many ways like mushrooms. That is, they appear most often in dark cool places and thrive on substances deposited on the land through centuries of use. Unlike mushrooms that utilize the decaying remains of organic matter contributed by centuries of drifting leaves, broken branches, and fallen trees, ghosts find none of this humus nourishing.

Good health comes to a ghost only if it abides in a place abundant in memories.

Memories of gut wrenching emotions, hate—lots of hate. Boundless love and gigantic portions of treachery and deceit. And all this must be laced together by centuries of murder and mayhem. Very few places in this country can qualify for ghost habitation even at minimum standards. Not that we aren’t trying, but even us Natives just haven’t occupied this part of the earth long enough and deeply to leave behind the huge depots of sorrow required.

Nevertheless, there are a few places.

In Southern Colorado, just a little ways up Grimes Creek in the valley of the Vallecito Reservoir, there is a very ghost-fertile spot and something strange resides there.

One thing you can bet on:

Grandmother knew about the ghostly thing, knew it came to the room just past midnight once every year. The sight of such an object slowly, methodically searching the room in the early morning would have frightened most people into an early grave. But not Grandmother. She had Indian blood and knew about ghosts and their doings. She was fascinated by its hunt for something lost there nearly a century before. It remained her secret. Only once or twice did she mention having a night visitor. And then it was done in such an off‑handed manner that one was led to believe that a small chipmunk or some other gentle forest creature had gained entrance to the cabin.

It is a mystery as to why she never told Grandfather. Knowing that it could not be established as a purely Baptist apparition, she probably felt he would view it as an evil presence.

Twenty years after Grandmother had been laid to rest, the thing made itself known to another member of the family.

On holiday from Dallas, Uncle Bob had come to the mountains to visit Grandfather. He had gone to bed for the third night in Grandmother’s room. He had a slight headache and had been unable to sleep.  About midnight he turned on the bed lamp to read.

Within an hour the sight of motion in the corner of his vision caused him to bolt upright. Just above the door leading to the hallway a hand was feeling along the narrow ledge of the door frame. It wore no rings nor bracelets that could be seen on the wrist above the door. The size and a patch of thick black hair on its back identified it as a man’s hand.

Thinking an intruder was in the house Uncle Bob slipped from the bed and armed himself with a fireplace poker. When he turned back to the door, the hand was gone. He had not heard the sound of a moving hinge or the distinctive click of a door being closed. Yet when he reached the door it was firmly latched. Raising the poker at the ready he opened the door to let light filter into the dark hallway.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing was there.

Grandfather was aroused from a deep sleep and together they searched the cabin from top to bottom. Uncle Bob found a flashlight and examined the attic. They found nothing. Not a rat or cat or squirrel.

When daylight came they circled the cabin looking for fresh tracks in the snow. There were none. Not a two-ounce mouse could have left the house without leaving marks in the soft snow.

Later in the morning more of the family arrived. Happenings of the night were told and retold.  The newcomers were quietly suspicious. Uncle Bob was truly astounded when someone pointed out it was April Fool’s Day and no one could possibly believe such a wild story.

Very shortly everyone was convinced it was not a prank and began searching for explanations for the occurrence. Finally it was universally agreed that it had been a hallucination. It should have been expected since Uncle Bob was six thousand feet above his normal elevation. He hadn’t had time to acclimate, his blood wasn’t carrying enough oxygen to let his brain function properly. This, most likely, was the cause of his headache the evening before.

This line of reasoning seemed to satisfy everyone and the matter was forgotten, for a while anyway.

And then someone remembered the cabin was not the first to be built on that exact spot

#

The pit for the septic tank had been much easier to dig than had been expected. When a depth

of five feet had been reached it was discovered that a root cellar had been dug there previously.

Five rusty cooper’s rings and blackened oak staves of a storage barrel were much in evidence.

When the ground was leveled for the cabin foundation pieces of half burnt logs that had been notched at the ends were uncovered. These had been part of the walls of a cabin built and burned before the first homesteaders came to the valley.

#

Several months after Uncle Bob’s night‑time experience, a small item in a weekly news sheet published in Durango, Colorado in 1883 was discovered in a small private collection of pioneer artifacts.

The death of Hans Grotz was announced between an ad asking for the return of a stolen or strayed milk cow and a gossip item about a family trip to Santa Fe. It seems that the beaver trapper had been found strangled to death in his cabin on Grimes Creek which was somewhere on the upper waters of the Pine River.

#

Later this death was recorded in surprising detail in a private journal on April 15, 1913 by a miner of that period.

The grisly details were related by John Red to a young miner‑prospector by the name of Byron Edmon. This unpublished story had been written on brown paper with a soft leaded pencil. The manuscript was smudged but still legible.

Exactly thirty years before on that very day, he, John Red, no more than a boy then, had been employed as a mule wrangler with a pack string that hauled supplies to the little community of Tuckerville and brought out silver ore.

They had been about three hours from night camp when the trail boss sent John Red on an errand only a mile or so off-trail, up Grimes Creek. The task was to find how many bundles of skins were to be hauled out from the trapper’s camp on the return trip. Red had been chosen to break trail to the cabin because the mule he was riding had long legs and could break trail through the newly fallen snow with ease. When he arrived at the cabin there was no sign of life.

Snow had drifted halfway up the cabin door. After much effort he succeeded in pawing snow away from the door just enough to let him enter. It was very dark inside, he blinked his eyes then closed them for a long moment. He still couldn’t see so he closed them again and stood still, waiting and listening.

The smell of raw beaver pelts was overpowering.

Slowly his vision adjusted.

There were several bundles of furs tacked against the wall to his right. To his left he could see an indistinct form lying on a bunk. The smell of sulfur stung his nostrils when he leaned over the bunk and drug a match across the cabin wall. The flare blinded him he and he cupped the light away from his face with his free hand.

The most terrifying sight he had ever seen greeted his eyes.

In one movement he was out the door and on the back of his mule. The mule knew fear and death when he smelled it and made the snow fly all the way back to the mule train.

Sam, the owner of the mule train, gave orders for the mules to be taken on to the night camp grounds, then directed John Red and one other wrangler to follow him back to the cabin.

They shoveled snow away from the door to let more light into the one room cabin. Sam went inside, leaving the two boys standing in the snow. Very shortly he came out into the light.

“He is sure as hell is as dead as a door nail. We will have to bury his body as quickly as possible. See if the ground is frozen over there.” He nodded his head toward a thin spot in the snow. A small patch of snow was cleared and the ground tested. It was hard as concrete. “Well, let us see if we can dig in the dry cabin floor.”

After the first few inches of hard packed earth were removed the digging was easier, but it became obvious that it would take several hours to complete the grave. Sam said: “Well, there is no hurry. We can’t finish the job before dark. The moon won’t give us light to ride by until way after midnight.”

Sam did not seem to be much unnerved by the corpse on the bunk, but the two boys would have liked to have been someplace else and said so.

The cabin had been built on a gravel bar and some of the round boulders were over a foot in diameter. It was getting too dark to see before the hole was a foot deep. Sam had brought in firewood while the boys had taken turns digging. Soon firelight flickered around the room from a small fireplace in the corner. When there was enough light to see clearly, Sam inventoried the cabin.

“He must not have been dead very long. He’s got a nice bunch of pelts there. We’ll pack them to town and let the sheriff decide who gets the money.”

An old cap and ball rifle hung above the doorway. Hidden under an old shabby overcoat Sam found a coal-oil lamp but there was no fuel for it.

Light bounced off the rough ceiling made of white aspen saplings and seemed to focus on the face of the dead man. Sam looked at the rigid features, studying every detail. Its eyes and mouth were open and teeth bared. Its mouth shaped as if still trying to scream. Both hands were thrust  upward as if still trying to ward off—something.

“He sure as hell was either strangled to death or just died of fright! That is enough to make a man need a drink!” Sam said.

At this both boys made a run for the door, but the darkness outside was even more of a threat. They compromised and stood in the doorway.

“Dead as he is, he’s not goin’ to hurt anybody.” Sam laughed at the big-eyed boys. “You boys don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” He took his hat off and rubbed the top of his head. “It surely is a  gruesome sight, I’ll admit. Try to get that hole a little deeper and get him buried out of sight.” Sam turned his attention back to the corpse. “Look at that glove he has twisted in the fingers of his left hand.” He reached down and tried to remove the glove but it was locked in death’s grip. “Looks like he pulled that glove off his other hand. Why would he be wearing gloves in bed? Where’s the other one? That is his glove. It’s got fancy initials on the cuff.”

Within another hour the two boys had finished the shallow grave. John had agreed to carry the feet of the dead man if Sam would cover the head and hands with a blanket. After the heavy work of digging, the dead body seemed light.

Setting it down by the hole, they knelt by it and gently slid it to the bottom. John started to fill in the grave from the feet upward. When the first shovel of dirt landed on the blanket it slid off the dead man’s hand, the one holding the glove…

As if the corpse were making a threatening gesture.

John dropped the shovel and backed up to the door. Sam retrieved the tool and quickly covered the body with a thin layer of sand and gravel. While the boys finished filling in the hole Sam picked up a blackened coffee pot, turned it upside down gave it three heavy thumps with the flat of his hand and walked out into the night to fill it with snow. When the water in the pot began to boil, it was pulled from the fireplace. Then back to the edge of the fire after a handful of coffee had been added. It took only a few minutes to finish putting all the dirt back in the hole Some of the larger rocks had been set back to make a final covering. They hoped this would discourage animals from digging there.

In silence they washed down smoked meat and cold biscuits with hot coffee.

“We best try to get a little shut eye,” Sam said, “If you all don’t mind, I’ll stretch out on the bunk.”

The boys made no objection. Neither one of them would have slept there for an extra month’s wages.

Sam lifted a blanket off the bed and shook it out. He felt along the backside of the bunk then knelt down to look under it. “Wonder where that other damn glove went?” Back on the bunk, Sam covered himself up with the blanket. “You boys need not worry about oversleeping. I’ll have to get up to go outside about when the moon is up.”

Both boys lay down on the hard packed earth of the cabin floor with their feet toward the fireplace. They wrapped themselves with coats and saddle blankets. Each used a saddle for a pillow. The fire was not allowed to die down. Its warmth did not seem to reach the cold floor, but the light reflecting off the mound of rocks covering the dead man somehow made them feel more secure.

True to his word Sam woke up with the moon. He added more wood to the fire and more snow to the coffee pot. When the pot was set next to the fire both boys sat up and began to gather their gear. Together they carried saddles out into the weak moonlight. By the time the mules were saddled the coffee had begun to steam.

“Get as much hot brew down as you can,” Sam advised, “It’s going to be a long cold ride before daylight.”

Most of the moonlight was filtered out by high thin clouds, but the deep tracks made by the mule train the evening before were dark and easy to follow.

There was no more than a faint hint of daylight in the sky when campfire smoke drifted down to them, mules greeted each other from a distance in the thin cold mountain air. Fatback bacon and corn mush had been mixed in a large Dutch oven set in hot coals at the edge of the campfire. A large sheepherder’s coffee pot was its companion. Mule spinners took turns dipping their tin cups into the cast iron tub. With the last of the corn mush and bacon, they turned their attention to the coffee pot. When there was nothing left to eat or drink, the oven was rubbed out with snow and each rider wiped the outside of his cup with snow. In short order packs were loaded back on the mules. One last long climb would put the string of mules on top of Middle Mountain, and in Tuckerville.

Once there, they were happily greeted. Miners, in the last stages of cabin fever, treated them as if they were Santa and his reindeer.

John Red had no more than swung out of his saddle when Sam told him to gather the mules that carried supplies for the Ruby mine.

“It’s only three miles over there,” Sam said, “We can make it before dark if we get a move on.”

It had been a long night and a day. John had wondered if his mule dreaded the next two hours as much as he did. At least the hard climb was done. Only rolling hills lay between Tuckerville and the Ruby mine.

#

They made it to the mine well before dark.

Eager hands pulled supplies from pack saddles. Ruby. his wife, and eleven-year-old son lived in a two-room cabin on the rim of a three-hundred-foot drop-off. The four miners who worked for him slept in a lean-to shed and dugout about thirty steps away.

That evening after everyone had eaten and the miners had gone to the dugout, Mrs. Ruby had said good night, then she and the boy had gone to their sleeping quarters in the other room. John Red had curled up on the hard-packed floor of the kitchen next to the big cast iron cook stove.

He was vaguely wondering how many mules it had taken to haul it up the mountain. He could feel his body relaxing in waves of comfort and warmth. Mrs. Ruby had given him two blankets for cover and his coat made a fine pillow. He drifted off, half-listening to the men’s low voices.

Sleep was coming on fast, when all of a sudden his eyes popped open. Sam and Mr. Ruby were still at the kitchen table talking, louder, more fearful. Sam had just finished telling of the finding of Grotz’s body.

“I am not a very superstitious man,” Howard Ruby had said, “But knowing Patty McCarty the way I did I was afraid of something like this. It was Patty’s right hand that strangled Hans. The glove you found in Hans’ hand was the one that had been on Patty’s hand the day he died.”

“Patty has been dead over a year,” Sam’s voice asked in a strange tone, “What do you mean, Patty’s right hand strangled Hans Grotz? There’s no way Grotz could have been dead more than a week or so.” For a long moment no sound came from the table, Mr. Ruby sought a place to start an explanation.

“We never found any part of his right hand or the glove that was upon it. It had vanished.”

There was another long silence, then Mr. Ruby started and didn’t stop talking until the story of Patty McCarty’s death was completed.

#

Mr. Ruby told Sam that he had never told anyone that he suspected that Patty’s death had been murder. You just couldn’t make an accusation like that unless a body was sure and there was no possible proof.

He finished: “Still I believe it wasn’t an accident. I was the one that was supposed to have died. Hans set that blast for me. That day of the death I had sent Grotz into the tunnel to drill the last hole in the ore face and load all five holes with powder. When he came out as always we stopped what we were doing to listen. All of us distinctly heard five blasts and thought it was safe to go into the mine.”

“Patty never was much good at telling high grade ore from rock, so I sent him in to start bringing out the freshly blasted muck. This order had upset Hans. He reminded me that I never had let anyone go in first after a round had gone off. I had always told the men working for me that I wanted to be the first to see the glory hole when we blasted into it. Hans Grotz’s voice had had a st range almost hysterical ring. I explained that we were behind in up grading ore and asked him to come and help. When I glanced up at him he acted as if he hadn’t heard the order. Standing stock still, he watched Patty check his carbide lamp and load a short-handled shovel into the battered old wheel barrow we were using to haul out the muck.”

“Patty was pushing it toward the mine entrance when Hans called to him. The pair of gloves Patty was wearing were badly frayed with several finger tips missing. Hans offered to trade the new pair he was wearing for an old jack knife Patty carried in his pocket. Since the knife had a broken handle Patty had jumped at the chance to best Hans in a swap. The trade had been made and Patty had jokingly asked if Hans was sick or something saying that he had never known Hans to be worried about anybody else getting blisters. Patty had noticed that Hans had branded his initials on the cuff of each glove and mentioned that it wouldn’t do Hans any good. He wouldn’t be able to reclaim the gloves because there were to many witnesses.”

“Patty had given Hans a big Irish grin and disappeared into the tunnel. Hans had taken several steps toward the entrance as if to follow. I thought for a moment he was going to call Patty back out.  Then he had turned to where the other miners were busy high‑grading ore. Only I had witnessed his strange behavior. He had squatted down at the ore dump and just looked at it as if he were seeing something else. Suddenly there had been the sound of a loud blast from within the tunnel. All of the miners had stood up, then made a run for the mine entrance. I called for them to stop and selected tough old Hugh Carrel to go in with me. The others were ordered to stay outside unless we had trouble.”

John Red would later recall Ruby saying that the air in the tunnel had been heavy with dust and powder smoke. They had found Patty’s lifeless body with little difficulty. In their haste, they had half-carried and half-dragged his limp form into fresh air and sunlight. Strangely enough his clothes had not been torn off by the blast. The cause of his death could not be determined. His right arm had been severed three inches above the wrist, but he had not had time to bleed to death before the body had been reached.

All of the muck had been removed from the shaft and hastily searched for Patty’s missing hand. Nothing was found. Though they sifted through the shattered rock many times, the right hand nor the glove that had been upon it was never found.

Patty was buried the next day missing his hand.

#

Ruby said: “That evening after supper Hans and I sat at the kitchen table long after the others had gone to bed. I kept hoping he would say something, but he didn’t. Finally I told him that I knew he hadn’t meant to kill Patty. He had been the closest thing he had to a friend. I didn’t know how but he had set a delayed charge and it had been set to kill me. I couldn’t prove it so I would never say anything to anybody else. I told him: ‘I was the one. It wasn’t the mine or the money it would bring you were after. You have been nearly out of your head ever since your wife and child died with the fever three years ago. I’ve noticed the way you look at my family. It was them you were after, wasn’t it?’”

“Hans had just looked out the kitchen door into the darkness. I’m not sure he heard me. He would get his back pay in the morning, I couldn’t trust him in the mine anymore. ‘I sure hope for your sake I’m wrong about the whole thing.’ I’m still not sure he heard me. I had decided to leave it at that and got up to go to bed. But if I wasn’t wrong I sure wouldn’t want to be in his shoes with the likes of Patty’s ghost on my back trail. Patty was a strange man. With no more than a drink or two he could talk to and hear people others couldn’t hear. I never was sure Hans heard a word I said. The next morning he left before sun-up.”

“Several months passed before word came up from the valley below that Hans Grotz had built a cabin on Grimes Creek. He had said he was finished with mining and would try his luck at trapping. I sent Hans’ wages to him. I would bet my bottom dollar that Hans died on April the first, one day to the year after Patty was murdered. Strangled by Patty’s own missing right hand that had never been given a proper burial.”

Ruby sounded quietly striken.

Sam said he didn’t believe much in ghosts, but some thing sure as hell had done Hans in.

John Red didn’t know what to think.

#

The mule train made several more uneventful trips up on Middle Mountain that summer.

Late in the fall of the same year, two men moved into Hans’ cabin to try their luck at trapping.

They had done well for themselves until the first day of April the following year.

This was the second anniversary of Patty’s murder. Just after midnight a late blizzard had blown in. Snow drifting through an unchinked space between two logs woke up one of the men. He threw wood in the fireplace to get light enough to chink the hole. When this was finished he looked across the room at his sleeping compatriot.

He saw movement on the covers. He moved a little closer to get a better look. His eyes had bugged out and he held his breath.

It was a man’s hand searching the folds of the top blanket. The hand had floated off the bunk down to the floor like a giant scorpion.

“Get up! Get up!” he hollered at his friend.

The man sat up in bed and he too watched the hand slowly make searching motions across the floor. When it changed directions and started toward the standing man he grabbed an oil lamp, and threw the lamp at the hand on the floor.

The glass lamp broke and spread oil over the floor and wall of the cabin. The hand had stopped moving. There was no motion in the cabin at all. Then a trickle of oil ran into the fireplace and flame spread across the floor and up the wall. The hand had disappeared.

Both men made a run for the door. One grabbed his boots on the way out. The other had to go back and get his. Both had slept in their clothes but neither had coats.

The burning cabin kept them from freezing to death. The snow storm played out before daylight. By the time they had salvaged remaining food from the root cellar, the sun had taken off the early morning chill and they started the long walk to town. The first night saw them to a deserted lean-to on the Florida river.

One of the men had become ill during the night and was unable to travel the following morning. His breathing was very shallow.

John Red had been with the mule train that came by late in the afternoon on the same day.  They picketed the mules and Sam had tried to doctor the dying man.

That night the trapper told his story at the camp fire. When he described the big hairy hand with a bloody stub sweeping across the floor some of the men moved away from him a little.

The sick trapper died during the night. Snow was cleared away beneath a large pine tree and they took turns digging the grave. When the mule train was loaded up again, Sam offered the  remaining trapper a mule to ride to Durango. The man declined the kindness saying he would be more comfortable walking.

It had been a hard climb up to the top of Middle Mountain in the new snow. When they reached the Ruby mine, Sam told Howard Ruby about the events and the burned cabin in the valley below.

“When I was a little boy my parents told of a haunted castle in the old country,” Howard Ruby replied. “As I recall, the ghost came back to the castle once every hundred years to the very room where it had been killed. It looks as if Patty’s hand is going to come back every year. It must be looking for the glove Hans pulled off its fingers. I wonder how many hundreds of years it will come back to search?”

No new snow had fallen, so the mules found it easy going coming down the trail with loaded ore bags the next day. When the string reached the turn-off to Grotz’s cabin site, John Red had asked if he could ride up there to salvage rifle parts. Two rifles had been left in the burning cabin, after all. Sam said it was alright with him, but cautioned John not to let any ghost get a hold on his coat tail.

When John rode over the last little hill the cabin ruins looked black against the contrasting white snow. He had sat his saddle looking at the pile of still-smouldering ashes, wondering where the rifles might be buried.

Suddenly his mule began to tremble and he felt a chill start between his shoulder blades and crawl to the top of his scalp. Whatever it was the thing was still there. Without dismounting he had backed the mule up a few steps then turned back to the trail. He decided that he would tell Sam it was too dangerous to dig in the ashes.

When he reached the main fork to the little settlement on the Animas river he remembered wondering how a river could get a name like that: Rio de Los Animas, in Spanish it meant the River of Souls.

He had thought of the Spanish rancher and his beautiful grand-daughter he had seen in the General Store the day the mule train had left town. He recalled the dark eyes and friendly smile of the girl. Yes, Sir, that old Don would be the very one to ask.

But that was another story for another evening. John Red had brought his camp fire audience back from the past by remarking how straight upward smoke from the fire was rising. Wasn’t it uncommonly still? Wasn’t the night chill a little deeper than usual?

__________________________

My father Lee M. (Tad) Crane spent his early life in west Texas, enduring a rough start in the Great Depression. He weathered childhood illness with the aplomb of the Greatest Generation: “We didn’t complain about unfair things were. We just got stuff done, and found joy where we could.” From an early age he was a storyteller and a photographer.

Part of the petroleum diaspora, Tad Crane moved around the American Southwest as an oilfield chemical engineer from the late 40s to the mid 1950s, when he and his young family settled in Aztec, NM.

There, he embedded himself into the life of the community: as an unofficial mayor-chronicler and political gadfly. After going blind from a horrific highway accident…he started two new companies and doubled down on his quiet zest for life. He put food on the table and a roof over our heads. He encouraged us to be skeptical and rational beings. He buried two beloved wives: my mother, in 1989, and in 2013, my dear step-mom.

Like many of the Greatest Generation, he didn’t talk much about his feelings, hopes, or wants. Getting those out of him was like finding a nugget of gold in a Colorado creek.

He liked to listen to audio books, and collect stories of the vast landscape and uneasy cultural mix that is the American Southwest. “The Ghost of Grimes Creek’ is one of his originals, but rooted in legend around the area of my Grandfather’s cabin up north of the shimmering blue wonder of the Vallecito Reservoir. I played in that cabin and beside that creek, when I was a kid.

Tad Crane passed away on the morning of October 2, 2020.

We’ll miss ya, Dad.