It just so happens sometimes that people leave their inhabited lands. Then, on the site of the once prosperous town, an empty, a little mysterious and eerie settlement remains. Ghost town.
In the mid-19th century, a small gold nugget was found in the Grasshopper Creek in southwestern Montana. Soon gold diggers came to the banks of the stream.
At first, the vein was considered rich, and the population began to grow by leaps and bounds. The village was named Bannak, in honor of the Indian tribe that once lived in this area. The places were pretty wild, far from civilization.
By 1863, a post office was opened in the settlement of gold diggers, and it received the status of a city. Bannak became the capital of the county, and then, albeit briefly, the entire state. From the very beginning, there was created its own police, not subordinate to the federal one.
But by the early 1880s, the gold rush had subsided. The mines produced less and less precious metal, and the population began to thin out. However, it was not completely abandoned. The settlers achieved the assignment of the status of a historical monument to Bannak, and now the remaining several dozen houses have been mothballed and maintained.
Voices from the past
The ghost town has become a favorite search destination for all sorts of experts in the paranormal. After all, the supernatural beats there not with a key, but with a real fountain.
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On August 4, 1916, 12-year-old Dorothy Dunn drowned in a stream. Soon she began to appear to her friends. The ghost girl in the blue dress seemed to be calling them somewhere. Over time, she began to appear to strangers. Sometimes she was seen on the way to the stream, sometimes where the Dunn family's house was, sometimes in the lobby of the Mead Hotel.
"Ghostbuster" Greg Burkh-field claims that he managed to make contact with the ghost of Dorothy in the hotel building. As proof, he demonstrates a tape of a tape on which Greg can be heard asking the question:
- Is that you, kid?
And the teenager replies:
- Check it out!
True, the teenage voice is already very clearly synthesized by an electronic device. It is curious that Dorothy is seen only by girls and very rarely by adult men, but never by boys, women and old people.
Sheriff hunt
But the main star among Bannack's ghosts is the former sheriff of this town, Henry Plummer. Most often it can be found at the site where Skinner's saloon was located. At one time it was a real hangout.
The story of the life and death of Sheriff Plummer once shook the whole of America. We can safely say that the fate of this man reflected the violent temper and cruelty of the Wild West.
As a very young man, Plummer arrived in the town of Nevada City. At first, he worked hard at a bakery and saved enough money to buy a small ranch. In 1856, Henry, who had a reputation for being educated and well-mannered, was elected sheriff. He got down to business so abruptly and enjoyed such respect and authority that a year later he was re-elected to the same position.
However, the 25-year-old Plummer was not lucky - he was burned out by a passion for a married woman. One of the local gold prospectors found Henry with his wife one evening. According to one version, the deceived husband pounced on the sheriff with fists, according to the other - he challenged him to a duel. Plummer immediately proved that he could shoot better than his opponent. Despite the intercession of local residents, who claimed that it was self-defense, the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years and sent to San Quentin prison.
But Plummer's supporters were persistent. In addition, the young man was diagnosed with tuberculosis. And the former sheriff was released within six months. During his imprisonment, Plummer's ranch burned down, and he was again left penniless. For some time he worked as a clerk in a grocery store, and then again got involved "in a fatal story" - he shot a poker partner in a brothel.
Plummer was arrested again, but there was not enough evidence. However, in prison, Henry was identified by a petty thief as a stagecoach robber. He supposedly accidentally survived after one of the raids and confidently pointed at Plummer. However, the witness himself was once arrested by a former sheriff, and many felt that he was simply settling scores. Henry did not wait for the denouement: his former lover bribed the jailer, and Plummer fled in an unknown direction.
Dead Man's Letters
Perhaps the young man decided to submit to fate and embarked on the slippery slope of a robber just then or was involved in criminal activity even earlier. First, he tried to cover up his tracks: he sent a note to one of the California newspapers, according to which Henry Plummer and two accomplices were captured and hanged in Washington state, and he himself went to Bannack. There, according to one version, he put together a gang and healed on a grand scale. As it turned out, Plummer sought the place of sheriff, but lost the first election.
In January 1863, his lucky opponent was shot dead while trying to apprehend a robbery suspect. Plummer was able to present the case in such a way that the murdered sheriff came to a friendly meeting with the bandits, and Henry put everyone down on the spot.
Naturally, Plummer immediately took the coveted post. And he had no rivals - by the spring of 1863, the surrounding mountains were flooded with dozens of gangs.
At first, the local residents were pleased with the new sheriff - in a short time he and his assistants shot and hanged several dozen robbers. Then someone realized: Plummer is playing a double game, and the criminals he caught were just competitors.
The people of the American West were not defenseless lambs in those days. The prospectors of Bannack and neighboring Virginia formed a committee of vigilants, or vigilantes, and hunted down bandits. In January 1864, they overfished and hanged four dozen of Henry's accomplices. Probably, one of them "split", and the sheriff fell under suspicion.
In February 1865, a detachment of 65 armed vigilantes broke into Plummer's office. He was tied up, tried and immediately hanged. True, for past merits, they were buried according to the generally accepted custom, and not like a bandit. By the way, robberies in the vicinity did not stop, although they began to decline. The last gang was defeated only in 1867.
The controversy over Plummer's guilt continues to this day. Evidence of his ties to the bandits was sketchy and conflicting. The vigilants did not keep any documentation. And there is no guarantee that robbers who wanted to settle scores with the sheriff did not creep into their ranks.
A year after Plummer's death, inscriptions began to appear on the fences and walls of Bannack's houses: "Henry is innocent." Sometimes they were made with chalk, sometimes with blood. For a long time it was believed that these were the tricks of the supporters of the executed sheriff. But as time went on, the town was abandoned, Plummer's name was forgotten, and the inscriptions continued to appear. In addition, his grave was found twice dug. For the second time, a mysterious grave-digger stole the skull of the deceased and for some reason hid it in the back room of Skinner's saloon. Soon after, the wooden drinking establishment caught fire and burned to the ground. But the area where the saloon stood is still the favorite place of the Plummer's ghost.
Sometimes tourists even manage to take a picture in which the blurred figure of a young man is visible. But the mysterious blood inscriptions stopped appearing when in 1993 a Beaverhead County judge reviewed Plummer's case and ruled: presumably innocent.
Mark ALTSHULER