Haunted Histories: Insight into Bodie and Skidoo

Excerpts from the LA Times article by Hugo Martin. For full story click here.

Spirits of the West hang around ghost towns

The ghost towns of the American West recall a desperate era. Located on high plains and open deserts where sandstorms and cold winter nights embalm any semblance of life, these towns still whisper their legends to anyone willing to stop and listen.

You'll hear the stories of the men, the women and the children who abandoned their homes, gave up their mining claims and vanished.

Today, these ghost towns offer little more than dusty whiskey bottles on warped shelves, dog-eared hymnals in church pews and framed black-and-white photos, veiled in spiderwebs.

Skidoo, Calif.: Pity the hard-luck residents of Skidoo, perhaps the sorriest little mining settlement in the West.

In its short-lived, miserable history, the town had the misfortune of attracting such desperate characters as Joe "Hooch" Simpson. In 1908, this down-on-his-luck barkeep made the mistake of gunning down the town banker for $20, and when a lynch mob finally got its hands on him, they couldn't wait to build a proper gallows. They hanged him from the telegraph pole that brought news of the outside world to this benighted patch of earth.

When a reporter from the Los Angeles Times showed up to take a photograph, the good citizens of Skidoo accommodated him by digging up Hooch, brushing him off and hanging him again. But then the town doctor, in a macabre moment, lopped off Hooch's head to test for syphilis, the possible cause of his sudden madness.

No wonder the twice-hanged, headless Hooch still wanders these empty hills in Death Valley where all that remains are a historical marker, broken bottles and hundreds of abandoned mine shafts.

Directions: From Stovepipe Wells, drive southwest along California Highway 190 for nine miles, turn left on Wildrose Canyon Road and, after nine more miles, turn left on the first major gravel road and continue for almost eight miles. For more information, call the Death Valley National Park at (760) 786-3200.

Bodie, Calif.: Bodie is a cursed ghost town. Pilfer anything from one of the old sun-bleached buildings north of Mono Lake -- a nail, part of a clock or even an old bottle -- and bad luck latches onto you forever.

Don't believe it? Then tell it to the visitors of this ghost town who have been returning stolen stuff with tales of heartbreak, death and serious injury that beset them once they left this Eastern Sierra settlement.

One fearful visitor even returned the nail that pierced her tire as she drove through town.

Directions: From U.S. Highway 395, take California Highway 270 east. Drive 10 miles to the end of the pavement and continue three miles on a dirt road. For more information, call Bodie State Historic Park, ( 760) 647-6445.