Today I want to indulge in a little bit of time tripping with you, back to British Columbia in the summer of 1863 during the gold rush. This post will also begin a three part Summer historical mystery series. I hope you enjoy them.
Part One
Long before UFOs entered our current pop culture, newspapers were publishing reports of strange lights in the sky, ghosts and unexplained disappearances.
One of the most strangest and still unsolved from this time period is the case of the Phantom of the Cariboo Trail, which I first read about in a copy of Fate magazine from 1961.
The Phantom of the Cariboo Trail
The gold rush changed British Columbia almost overnight. During this time period new roads were being built and large settlements were created in order to house the thousands of fortune seekers coming into the area. There are many spooky stories from this time in our history and one of the best documented is the Phantom of the Cariboo Trail. Its a mystery that haunted the area during the early 1860s and then seemingly vanished as suddenly as it appeared.
Construction of the Cariboo Trail was completed by 1863 and stretched north from Yale through some of British Columbia’s most dangerous terrain. The trail crossed steep and rocky slopes and deep, winding river valleys before continuing through Lillooet toward the gold fields near Barkerville.
James Douglas the governor back then, regarded this project as one of the colony’s greatest achievements and he had intended for it to secure British Columbia’s trade routes and reduce BC’s dependence on transportation through the state of Oregon.
The Cariboo Trail was considered by many to be an engineering success at the time, but the road itself was still known to be quite treacherous. Travelers went through isolated often dangerous mountain areas, where if you needed help or assistance with anything you were unlikely to find any. It was along this very route that the stories began to circulate of a mysterious “phantom” that was responsible for the disappearance of pack animals and cargo.
On August 5th 1863 John Fillmore was leading fifty pack mules that were carrying supplies to the mining camps. Late into the afternoon they decided to camp near Spencer’s Bridge for the night. As darkness fell over the camp, the night guard noticed an unusual white light moving across the sky. It drifted back and forth before disappearing into the darkness. Apart from the strange UFO-like display, nothing else seemed out of the ordinary until the morning when they realised that three pack mules had vanished without a trace! Fillmore reported the loss to the authorities, which was, to the best of my knowledge and research, the first officially recorded encounter with the “phantom” of the trail.
A few nights later the phantom struck again!
Team lead George Lateau had been carrying gold on a train of pack mules when he decided to camp for the night near Yale. Once again, the night watch observed the white lights moving overhead, this time describing them as tracing a broad half circle or possibly a saucer-shape before disappearing. In the morning they found three mules had vanished. Again three mules! Note that the number three is possibly significant here.
Every member of the expedition was questioned and there was no evidence of thievery nor did any one witness exactly what happened with the mules and cargo.
Many of these camps were located in small clearings carved into the mountainsides. Steep cliffs rose up above the camps with equally dangerous drops below. Escaping with several heavily laden pack animals should have been impossible and yet this is exactly what was happening. Search parties were sent out to look for evidence and no tracks were ever found and there was no sign of the missing animals or cargo.
And the losses continued.
Mysterious lights were seen and this was always followed by the disappearance of three pack mules and their cargoes. As the news of the disappearances and strange lights spread across British Columbia speculation ran rampant. Some believed a band of thieves had discovered an impossible route through the mountains and others spoke of devils, or ghosts, or some other unknown creature inhabiting the wilderness. Possibly Sasquatch? I’m guessing.
By late 1863 the Cariboo Trail had acquired such an ominous reputation that traffic along the route declined dramatically. The road was built at an enormous public expense and it was rapidly losing its commercial value. The public officials could no longer dismiss the reports as isolated incidents and so the authorities made the decision to hire the American Pinkerton Detective Agency.
The Pinkerton’s planned a sophisticated sting operation. News was deliberately circulated that a mule train carrying $50,000 in gold would soon be travelling along the Cariboo Trail. In reality, every member of the expedition was a Pinkerton detective hoping to apprehend whoever was behind the series of thefts.
The agents waited throughout the night and they too observed strange white lights moving silently overhead, but saw nothing else unusual. Again, when morning arrived, three mules had disappeared. Despite every precaution being taken and the expertise of the Pinkerton detectives, the phantom had struck again!
Then, almost as suddenly as the mystery had begun, it ended.
Early in 1865 the unexplained disappearances just stopped. There was no official explanations, no arrests were ever made, and no hidden cache of stolen animals or cargo was ever recovered. By the following year, traffic had returned to the Cariboo Trail. Stagecoaches, wagons and pack trains once again travelled the mountain route. Gradually the story of the phantom passed from current news into regional folklore.
This story leaves behind more questions than answers
If organised thieves were responsible, how did they repeatedly remove heavily laden mules from camps surrounded by cliffs without leaving tracks or attracting any attention?
If the strange lights were unrelated, why do they appear so consistently throughout the reports?
Were the lights natural atmospheric phenomena or something altogether more unusual?
Why always three mules and cargo going missing, no more or no less? At least that we are aware of.
In European folklore roads are often associated with supernatural guardians, spectral processions, mysterious lights, or entities who prey upon unsuspecting travelers and the mostly European gold seekers would have brought these beliefs with them.
My own thoughts
I think its important to remember The Cariboo Trail passed through the traditional territories of several First Nations people. Each have their own oral traditions concerning spirits of place, supernatural beings, and the mountains themselves. And these have existed far longer than the interpretations of the European immigrants at least as they pertain to the North American mountain ranges.
The Cariboo Trail was in many ways an intrusion upon land that had long been understood as spiritually significant to the people who originally lived there. It was a form of spiritual violence that was justified by greed. To the gold seekers the mountains were nothing more than obstacles to be conquered in order to enrich themselves. But, the mountains are not dead things. I know this first hand being a mountain woman myself these past seven years. They have a powerful soul of their own and perhaps the gold seekers met the Genus Loci or “the spirit of a place.”
I believe this is what they may have encountered on the Cariboo Trail and later called a phantom, but I am open to all interpretations.
What do you think happened? Please do share your thoughts in the comments. And if you enjoyed this post please do let me know. Part 2 and Part 3 of the Summer historical mysteries series will publish in the next two weeks. Sharing, liking, subscribing really do help me out. Thank you for reading. I will be back next week with more mysteries for us to ponder.
Until next time friends,
Blessed Be xx
I have an odd hypothesis that one of the reasons why activity like this happens in a place for a time in the past and then stops is that the native people of that region who were regularly acknowledging that entity/energy and possibly doing ritual and ceremony to honor/placate it end up being exiled or killed off, and so the spirit also departs. It would be interesting in this case to see what the status of native people in that area at this time was, and were there any dispossessions, battles, massacres, etc. at that period.
Wow! I've never heard of this story before. Thanks for sharing this.