High Strangeness in Gold Rush country

The Middle Fork of the American River bustles with wild rainbows and browns. The river is challenging for fly anglers, particularly if you’re a dry fly junkie like me. 

The Middle Fork is a tough nut for fly casters because it’s big, fast, deep, and filled with forage, discouraging the trout from coming to the surface. The riverbank is steep in most areas and punctuated with poison oak. Wading is largely impossible and extremely dangerous if you do find a shallow enough spot. 

On this particular evening, I was pushing up the Quarry Trail toward my vehicle at a brisk pace. Dusk was quickly fading, and my truck was still about two miles away. It was clear I would be navigating the last mile of the hike in the bouncing beam of a headlamp, but the trio of 18-plus inch rainbows I’d fooled made the hike worth the effort.

I’d just passed a gold rush-era village site marked by a series of stacked rock foundations. I was striding along with the fly rod in my right hand. Suddenly I got the impression of someone pressing in behind me, violating my bubble of personal space. 

“Kinda late to be out here jogging,” I thought, moving to the right side of the trail and blading my left shoulder back to get a glimpse of the assumed jogger. 

Glancing back, I saw nothing behind me but gloomy woods. Confused, I stopped and turned around to scan the area I’d just passed.

As soon as I completed the turn, the sensation of someone standing behind me came on again. This time it was stronger, as if a person was standing close enough to whisper in my ear.

“In the span of a few racing heartbeats and with the dry, metallic taste of primordial, monkey brain fear invading your mouth, you can go from skeptic to believer very quickly.” 

I spun around a second time, greeted only by dead silence and still air. In the span of a few racing heartbeats and with the dry, metallic taste of primordial, monkey brain fear invading your mouth, you can go from skeptic to believer very quickly.

Sure, I’d heard stories about faint piano music emanating from the remote recesses of Philadelphia Bar on full moon nights. And my friend Mike Clark swore he’d seen the head and torso of a Chinese miner wearing a black smock and straw hat levitating above a gravel bar on the North Fork American. Now it had happened to me.

Up until that moment on the Quarry Trail in 2002, I’d dismissed stories of spooks, specters, ghosts, and strange sounds haunting the canyons of the American River watershed as tall tales or the product of imagination. Now I was a believer.

Moving quickly toward the truck, I did a self-assessment. The initial shock prompted a surge of fear, but that passed. What I experienced was real, but it wasn’t menacing. 

Call it residual energy, a spirit, or a ghost; it had been playing with me. You’ve done it. You tap someone on the shoulder and then step away before they can spin around. That’s the game the entity was playing with me. It crowded into my personal space, knowing I’d turn around, and then did it again to make sure I knew what had happened a moment before was indeed real and not a figment of my imagination. 

I guess the ghosts of long-dead 49ers still have a sharp sense of humor! Such was my first encounter with the paranormal on the rivers and streams of the American River drainage, but it wouldn’t be the last.

When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, miners from many points of the globe beat a path to the American River watershed. Canyons that had been the domain of Native Americans and grizzly bears for thousands of years were quickly overrun by prospectors. Some early miners found fortune, most didn’t, and many, due to disease, injury, or acts of violence, died in the remote wilderness far from home and family.

Over the past 30 years I’ve spent a lot of time exploring the North, Middle, and South Forks of the American River and their tributaries, pursuing my triple passions of fly fishing, gold prospecting, and turkey hunting. The trout population in those canyons is robust, and take it from me: There is still plenty of gold to go around. 

After my initial ghostly encounter on the Middle American, things went quiet on the paranormal front for about a decade until one predawn morning. I was under and big gnarled oak tree high above Rucka-Chucky Rapids on the Middle American. It was spring, and I was enjoying the chill of dawn as I listened for gobblers to sound off when I got the distinct impression I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t fear, exactly. It was a state of hyper-alertness and the sensation of tingling on the back of my head and neck like I was being watched. 

The feeling eased, and I gave it no more thought until one morning a week or so later when I came on a lady guiding several other women on a horseback ride. They were stopped under the old oak having a snack. I stopped to say hello. 

Long story short, the ladies asked what I was hunting, and we started exchanging stories about wildlife in the canyon. A few minutes later, the guide disclosed we were standing under the “hanging tree” where robbers and bushwhackers were hanged and left to rot by the old timers as a warning to other crooks. Instantly the feeling I’d felt under the tree several days before made sense.

Once again, things went quiet, and I figured I was out of the paranormal business. And I was until five years ago when I got access to a gold claim on a remote section of the North Fork of the Middle Fork American River. Not only does the stream hold a lot of gold, but it’s also a delight to ply with fly gear. While the wild rainbows only run 8 to 10 inches, they make up for their diminutive size with bountiful enthusiasm. Often, I’ll spend an afternoon on the stream panning before breaking out the fly rod for an evening fishing session. 

The claim has been worked on and off since 1858, when a group of prospectors from Oregon first penetrated the N.F.M.F Canyon. During the Great Depression, a lot of down-and-out laborers headed to the California gold fields to mine. During that time, a suspension bridge was built across the stream at the top end of the claim. The bridge still stands today, rusting in the wilderness as a relic of the canyon’s gold mining past. 

Almost as soon as my prospecting partner Jordan Harger and I started working the claim, paranormal activity kicked in. One weekday afternoon, I had the first experience when I was down at the claim alone. 

I was exploring near a hand-stacked rock wall with a metal detector when I heard the sound of metal tools, despite the fact there was nobody around.  The sounds would fade in and fade out, getting louder and quieter. 

At times the sounds seemed to come from several yards away, but at other times they seemed to come from points well downstream or up on the canyon walls. It was a very strange experience, and it gave me a chill.

I didn’t mention the incident to Jordan initially, but he called me to report a strange situation a while later when he visited the claim alone. He was working and took off his gloves for a water break. He set the gloves on a slab of bedrock with his tools. When he reached for the gloves a few minutes later, he could only find one. Despite a thorough search, one of his gloves had seemingly vanished into thin air!

Since then, we’ve each heard the sound of tools and murmuring voices many times, both when we were alone and together. You’d think we’d be used to it by now, but the sounds still give us an uneasy feeling. We often joke about spending a night down on the claim but have yet to summon enough gumption!

This summer, I’ve experienced two new occurrences in the N.F.M.F canyon. One occurred in May when I took my cousin Tom down to check out the stream. He was sitting on a large rock and commented it was strangely vibrating. I laid my hand on the boulder and felt vibrations too. I have no explanation for what we felt…The boulder was vibrating!

My most recent brush with the paranormal came about a month ago while on an evening fly-fishing mission on the claim. I was standing in the water casting dries along a deep slot next to some streamside bedrock. Out of nowhere came a whiff of cigar smoke, faint a first and then stronger and stronger. I couldn’t see the smoke, but the smell was unmistakable. It persisted for many minutes, and a knot grew in my throat. I could see a good distance upstream and down. I was completely alone. And get this, the smell of the smoke seemed to be coming from my downwind side… WEIRD!

I could describe the climb up the steep switchback trail to my truck that evening in near darkness as unsettling, but that would just be sugarcoating the feeling of near panic that swept over me every time a twig snapped or something unseen skittered through the underbrush. 

Fly fishing is great in the remote canyons of the American River watershed, but if you’re faint of heart and frightened of things that whisper in the shadows, you might find another destination more to your liking.

2 comments
  1. I really enjoyed reading your article—it stood out as something truly unique! I love articles about tactics and destinations, but this take on paranormal experiences on the river was such a creative and refreshing article. Thanks for sharing such an unforgettable story!

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