The Haunted West

These are pictures taken at Pyramid City, another abandoned mining settlement outside of Reno. The Pyramid Mining District is located in the Mullen Pass area, at the junction of the Pah Rah Range and Virginia Mountains, situated approximately 30 miles north of Reno. To get there, Take the Pyramid Highway toward Pyramid Lake. It is the second to the last dirt road you will come to before reaching the reservation boundary. The settlement is like many mining operations; a combination past and present. There is an old ruined building that once housed a miner or miners. Next to the house is the remains of an abandoned, filled in mine shaft. Further on up the hill, there is a present day mining operation. Nowadays, the dilapidated remains of the building appears to be a party hideout for local teens. Upon entering the building we found walls covered with graffiti, discarded beer bottles and an old mattress for what use we didn't care to dwell on. While viewing the surrounding valley, we ...

Not long ago my W.I.G.S. buddy Paula was playing around with her digital recorder and caught an interesting EVP in her own home. EVP stands for electronic voice phenomenon. It sounded like a small child's voice, speaking in a sing-song voice, as though reciting a nursery rhyme. Around that same time, she set up a camcorder in her bedroom, with a full view of her bathroom. During the night, the camcorder caught the image of a shadow figure in her bathtub. It was all creepy enough to warrant an investigation. The investigation of Paula’s place took a little over 2 hours, including set up and breakdown. We wanted to see if we could capture more EVPs , as well as try to debunk the photo of the shadow in her bathroom. We set up a camcorder in her bedroom, facing the bathroom. In the original photo, there is a dark shadow in the shape of a head that looks to be peeking out over the edge of the bathtub. We thought that maybe the shadow could be caused by the back shadow of the camcorder...

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we couldn’t pass up a perfect opportunity to take a drive into Nevada’s back roads for a little ghost town exploring. We wanted to look at a couple of sidings on the northwest end of Pyramid Lake. A siding, in railroad terminology, is a “side track”; a section of track distinct from a through route, or main line. It may connect to the main track or to other sidings at either end. Sidings sometimes store equipment for loading and unloading freight cars. Industrial sidings divert alongside factories, mines, quarries, and warehouses. Sometimes sidings are found at public railroad stations. Another type of siding is the passing siding. This is a section of track parallel to a through line and connected to it at both ends by switches. Passing sidings allow trains travelling in opposite directions to pass, and for fast, high priority trains to pass slower or lower priority trains going the same direction. In earlier times, in order to divert the slower trai...

Eilley Orrum Cowan was one of a few women living in the Comstock Mining District when the 1859 strike occurred. She was a twice divorced woman living in Gold Hill and making her living washing clothes. According to local lore, a local miner could not pay his room and board, so in lieu of payment he gave Eilley ten feet of the Lode. Sandy Bowers came west from Missouri and worked as a Gold Canyon miner before the strike. He possessed ten feet of a claim next to Eilley Cowan's . When the two married, Sandy and Eilley Orrum Bowers became a couple of the first millionaires of the Comstock Era. Eilley was thirty-three, and Sandy twenty-nine. Most of the original Comstock claimants sold out within a few months, but Sandy and Eilley Bowers kept their holding. That decision made them rich. In 1861, Sandy and Eilley built a mansion in Washoe Valley costing several hundred thousand dollars (a fortune back then). Wanting the finest furnishings, the couple traveled to Europe on a...

Olinghouse is located about 30 miles east of Reno, 9 miles northwest of Wadsworth. To reach it from Reno, head east on I-80, exit onto State Route 427 into Wadsworth, north toward Pyramid Lake on State Route 447 for 2 miles, then turn west on an unmarked dirt road. This maintained road leads to the eastern side of the Pah Rah Range. The town is perched halfway up the side of the mountain range, about 7 miles from the turnoff. Early in the 1860s, during the beginning of the earliest Comstock boom, prospectors pushing out from the Virginia City area discovered the Olinghouse district, located about 30 miles northeast of Virginia City. Olinghouse was never very large, but it produced enough ore to support nearly continuous mining operations from the mid-19 th century to the present. Records indicate that, at one time, this little mining camp advertised itself as “The Biggest Little Gold Camp in Nevada”. The town was first named, "Ora," it later took the name of local sheep ...

My friend Paula and I share a mutual interest in history of the Old West, ghost towns, ghosts, and the paranormal. Recently, a paranormal conference was offered by the Truckee Meadows Community College( TMCC ). It sounded like a lot of fun and a chance to act like real "ghost hunters", so I called Paula up and armed with our cameras, flashlights, digital recorders, an ambient thermometer, and a cheap EMF detector, off we went. The conference was held at the Cal Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe. The program was nicely done, with a lecture portion in the afternoon, followed by a light dinner, and then ghost investigations that evening. There was a local historian and author turned ghost hunter who spoke about the history of the Cal Neva. The Cal Neva was once owned by Frank Sinatra, and it is said to be haunted by his spirit. Marilyn Monroe was a frequent guest and supposedly, her spirit has been seen by visitors too. According to some historians, she tried to kill herself up at the ...