Long Ride Shields presents its most ghastly blog yet. Joelle Fraser goes off the beaten path to discover nine of America's most haunted destinations.
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| Harley on a Harley |
When summer starts to fade, I know my riding days are numbered. My
mood begins to fall along with the leaves outside my door. Yet there is one
thing to look forward to before winter comes—the haunted rides of Halloween.
There’s something beautiful about the eerie atmosphere of late
autumn, when the smell of woodsmoke is in the air, and the sun—or moon--light
filters through the crimson and orange trees alongside the road.
I’ve gathered up a several places that rival any epic summer
ride. If you can’t make it to one of the following, then do some research in
your area. Make up your own route that includes a stop at a cemetery at sunset.
Light a candle and talk a walk through the graves...’Tis the season, after all!
1. Jerome, AZ
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| Photo from: http://backporchinsights.com/ghost-town-geeks/ |
Jerome is packed with interesting local shops: from glass
blowers and potters to painters and wineries, but The Gold King
Mine and Ghost Town is a must. There you will see demonstrations of antique mining
equipment and the operation of a turn-of-the-century sawmill. You can take
a walk in an authentic mine shaft, have fun with various animals to
pet and feed, see a circa 1901 blacksmith shop, and the world’s largest gas
engines.
Then, take a haunted tour with local
residents where supposedly resident gamblers, prostitutes, outlaws, and
victims of tragic mining accidents still aimlessly wander in search of peace.
2. Kenansville, FL
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| Kenansville, FL |
This is a late 1800's
cattle town on the now defunct Okeechobee spur of the Henry Flagler's Florida
East Coast Railroad. Legend holds that the hotel is the hotel that inspired a
young Elvis Presley to write his hit "Heartbreak Hotel". The railroad
did run right through town but the tracks and the depot are gone. The town died
when the railroad was pulled out. There is a small resident population of
farmers and cattlemen in the area. Further west on CR523 you can tour the old
Kenansville Cemetery. Turn left there and follow the road til it dead ends at a
left turn dirt road. This is the Old Peavine Road which runs out through the
Florida scrub and Hammocks. This road is one of the old pioneer roads of
Florida that few know about. The road is dirt but good and you can get a
feeling of what the old Florida looked like. It dead ends on US 60 so you
cannot get lost.
3. Bumpass Hell, Lassen Volcanic National Park
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Bumpass Hell at Lassen Volcanic
National Park. Photo © Winkelair/Dreamstime. |
Riding through Lassen National Park
is a stunning trip through spooky mountain vistas. The steamy hot springs and
burbling mudpots in this geothermal hotspot may seem scary all on their own,
but this region of Lassen Volcanic National Park became known as a “hell” after
unlucky explorer Kendall Bumpass fell into a pool of boiling-hot water and lost
one of his legs. The area also contains one of the hottest fumaroles in the
world, Big Boiler; its acidic, high-velocity steam has been measured at
temperatures up to 322 degrees Fahrenheit—closer to the weather in hell than
many other national park attractions.
4. Virginia City, Nevada
Virginia City is a biker’s paradise, with a
winding, gorgeous ride up route 341 Geiger Grade which starts in the Truckee
meadows and ascends rapidly through a series of hair pin turns and long
sweepers to the ghost and historic mining town. There are many panoramic views
of the valley below as well as the Sierras on the opposite side of the valley.
On the other side of Virginia City, take the fork to the right which will put
you on Rt 342 and through Gold Hill. Gold Hill has a haunted Hotel that is
described in the book "Haunted Nevada".
5. The Torture Chamber
Jewel Cave National Monument, South Dakota
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A spelunker in the depths of Jewel Cave
National Monument. NPS photo by Dan Austin. |
Explorers have mapped more than 177
miles of twisting underground passageways in this cave system and continue to
explore more of it each year with no end in sight, making it the third-largest
cave in the world. Two of Jewel Cave’s earliest explorers, Jan and Herb Conn,
discovered a large room after a long day of spelunking and were relieved to
hear the sound of loudly dripping water. Desperately thirsty with nothing left
to drink, they spent valuable time and energy hunting for the source of the
water instead of heading back to the surface for supplies. Despite their
fruitless attempts to rehydrate, they eventually survived the ordeal,
exhausted, and commemorated their frustration by giving the room its ominous
name.
6. Skidoo
Death Valley National Park, California
This famously hot desert park has its
share of foreboding landscapes, from Dante’s View to Devil’s Cornfield to
Coffin Peak to the Funeral Mountains. The area also features more ghost towns
than actual towns. In one particularly rough Old West mining settlement, a
saloon owner named Joe “Hootch” Simpson allegedly gunned down a banker in a
drunken rage in 1908 to settle a $20 debt. The townspeople subsequently formed
a lynch mob and hanged Simpson, then buried him, exhumed him and re-hanged him
for the benefit of a visiting reporter before the town doctor, finally,
strangely, beheaded him. Now, the legend goes that Simpson’s headless ghost
continues to haunt the area—though nothing remains of the town—to this day.
7. Devil’s Den
Gettysburg National Military Park,
Pennsylvania
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A stone staircase at Devil’s Den in Gettysburg
National Military Park. Photo © Jon Bilous/Dreamstime. |
In the summer of 1863, a small
farming community became the site of the bloodiest battle in the Civil War. The
fierce fighting turned farm fields into graveyards and churches into hospitals,
leaving a staggering 51,000 soldiers dead, wounded, or missing after three
intense days of conflict. Now, a barefoot Confederate ghost known as the “Tennessean”
or the “Hippie” has appeared to numerous visitors at a rocky hill known as
Devil’s Den where Union snipers fired on Confederate soldiers during the second
day of the battle. This ghost is said to gesture toward a nearby stream and
say, “What you’re looking for is over there,” before vanishing back into
history.
8. Kennecott Copper Mines
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and
Preserve, Alaska
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Abandoned buildings at the Kennecott Copper Mines in Wrangell-St.
Elias National Park and Preserve. Photo © Sarcophoto/iStockphoto. |
The total size of Wrangell-St. Elias
is equivalent to six Yellowstones, with few people to occupy its vast
wilderness. Nowhere does this sparse landscape feel as ghostly as it does in
the abandoned mining town of Kennecott. A century ago, this desolate area was
bustling with prospectors and miners, and a private company built an expensive
200-mile railroad to transport the area’s ore for processing. The railroad was
treacherous to build over the rough, glaciated terrain and many people were
reported to have died during the construction; still more perished in the
mining operations that followed. After the copper and gold ran out and the
mining towns turned to ghost towns, visitors began seeing tombstones along the
abandoned track, only to return later to say that the graves had mysteriously
disappeared. Legend has it that workers in the 1990s even stopped a
construction project after seeing and hearing phantoms and losing tools right
out of their workbelts to Kennecott’s angry ghosts.
9. Skull Rock
Joshua Tree National Park, California
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Photo © Tsebourn/Dreamstime.
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It’s a rock … that looks like a
skull! Is it haunted? Probably not. But it’s a short walk off the main park
road, making it one of the most accessible and fun places to explore at Joshua
Tree. Climb right into the eyes of this perfect Halloween-themed hiking spot
and haunt it yourself!
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| Joelle Fraser |
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