THERE IS A GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN!

By Caroline Clemmons 

Don't miss the giveaway entry at the end of the post!

Many of us are sorry to learn that the Charlie Brown movies have been purchased by a conglomerate and will not be show universally this year. Just when I learned there really IS a great pumpkin!

This really doesn't have anything to do with the Olde West but I hope you find it interesting. At least, Half Moon Bay, California is in the West. 

Last month when I was writing a Christmas story I needed to watch a feel-good movie. We intended to watch a Christmas movie but the one Hero and I watched  was about a pumpkin contest in a fictitious town probably modeled after Anoka, Minnesota. Anoka is known as the Halloween Capitol of the World for its famous parade. 

In the movie, the main characters decided at the last moment to try and win the local pumpkin growing contest. Almost immediately they had this large pumpkin. I couldn't believe a pumpkin could grow that fast. Well, it can and does. 

Each year, Safeway holds the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in the town of Half Moon Bay, California. The 2020 champion pumpkin at 2350 pounds, was grown by Travis Geinger of Anoka, Minnesota. He towed his giant entry to the annual competition to win this year’s title. He received $7 a pound in prize money. 

 

Travis Geinger and Tiger King

This champion pumpkin began with an $80 seed from a 1,501 pound pumpkin. And Gienger estimates his champion pumpkin had already expanded to 1,000 pounds in 20 days. Wow! 

"These pumpkins put on astronomical amounts of weight," Geinger said. "At their peak, they're growing 2-3 pounds an hour."

He's been growing pumpkins since he was fifteen, but this is his first time winning a pumpkin weighing contest. To get his pumpkin safely from Minnesota to California, he carried the giant in a trailer filled with dirt and straw. Getting his pumpkin safely into the trailer required 10 people and a forklift. 

When his family realized it would be striped orange and white, his brother in law suggested he name it Tiger King. This pumpkin was 19 1/2 feet in diameter and three feet tall. He watered the pumpkin frequently and kept it cool and covered.  

He expects to be back with another entry next year.

Terrible things, heartbreaking to the grower, happen to the giant gourds if they're not happy. A crack can appear, disqualifying the pumpkin. A hole from a soft spot can spurt pumpkin innards like a geyser.

According to the YouTube video, these large pumpkins require a lot of soil preparation. Seeds are started indoors in April and transplanted in May. When the weather is dry, they require 1,000 gallons of water a day. 

They're hand-pollinated early in the morning and then the blossom tied closed with cloth to prevent cross-contamination by natural pollinators and to protect the integrity of the line. A cover is provided to shade the gargantuan gourd to prevent it growing too fast and also to keep the skin soft and help prevent splitting. Energy can be lost from too much vine, so the tertiary vines are removed and other vines kept buried.

Unfortunately, the 50th annual Half Moon Bay Art & Pumpkin Festival was cancelled due to the pandemic. The event typically brings around 250,000 people to Half Moon Bay and raises close to $5oo,ooo each year for various charities. Instead, this year the festival committee launched the Pumpkin Power Project Support Fund, which has raised over $300,000 so far.

No matter how you celebrate Halloween, stay safe, don't eat too much candy, and have fun!

Sources:

YouTube

https://patch.com/california/halfmoonbay/tiger-king-pumpkin-weighing-2-350-pounds-wins-ca-contest 

I want to remind you about a treat I have for an upcoming holiday, MEG is #20 of the Angel Creek Montana Christmas Brides. This book is on preorder NOW for a December 18 release date!  

A desperate woman’s promise to a dying mother…

A man struggling to start a business…

Two orphans who need a home…

 Meg Todd is tired of putting her happiness on hold to help her spoiled sister and bully of a brother-in-law care for their home and children. When she learns her sister’s husband has horrifying plans for her, she asks an attorney family friend for help escaping. Meg wants her own husband and home and is willing to move over halfway across the country to achieve her goal. But is she too impulsive when she agrees to take two children from their dying mother?

Curtis McClain has to be careful with his small savings or it won’t fund his dream of his own newspaper. He wants a wife—he needs someone to help him with the newspaper. If he can combine the two, then he’ll be all right. In a few years, they can start a family. But, will a woman want to move to the middle of nowhere on those terms? If his new bride brings her own funds to the union, so much the better—that is if she doesn’t try telling him how to run his life.

Can two strong-willed people become the spouse each expects and the parents two children need?

https://mybook.to/Curtis

Until midnight October 28, you can still enter this exciting giveaway!

Sign up here: https://www.booksweeps.com/giveaway/october-2020/historical-romances/

It's Halloween, or almost

 Post by Doris McCraw writing as Angela Raines. 

Photo property of the author

Halloween is fast approaching. While it may not be the same as when we were children, it is the child in us that remembers dressing in costumes and going door to door for candy, or perhaps the community got together and had a party for adults and children. Either way, I thought I'd take a look at Halloween and by extension Cemeteries. 

For many of us, when we were children we looked forward to dressing up, spending time deciding who we were going to be for Halloween. I grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else. My mother would make the costume for both my brother and myself. One year the community got together in one of the old almost abandoned houses outside of town. Everyone came in costume. We bobbed for apples, the children ran around outside and generally got into trouble. (Just not too much.)

As I have gotten older the day doesn't mean as much to me. I have rarely been home for the 'trick or treaters' so I have even gotten out of the habit of having candy on hand for them over the years. At the same time, my love of cemeteries has grown. 

To me, each day at the cemetery is like the celebration, 'Dia de los Muertos', Day of the Dead. for me. I wander among the stones, seeing the stories, the names, and wonder what their lives were like. The stones, the monuments they leave are fascinating. At the same time, even though they leave large or small stones, in the end, they all are equal. Below are some of the stones in our local cemetery.

Some people leave large monuments
Photo property of the author

The statue for the Elks section
Photo property of the author

Others leave simple stones with what was important to them
Photo property of the author

A stone near the Myron Stratton Home plots
Photo property of the author

Sometimes families are listed under the same stone.
(you also wonder why the father has no death date)
Photo property of the author



I leave you with an excerpt from my short story ' Gilbert Hopkins in Going to Die' in the newly released anthology "Under Western Stars"

          Walking down that dusty street his eyes took in the weathered storefronts, worn hitch rails, and the periodic busted slats of the boardwalk. They didn’t look so old and forlorn in the rosy glow of the setting sun he thought with a smile. 

          At the end of the short street, where it met the main thoroughfare sat his small newspaper office. With a smile on his face and a lift of his shoulders, Gilbert unlocked the door and stepped inside. The smell of oil, ink, and he had to admit sweat, greeted him.

          He turned right and walked to his desk removing his coat and hanging it on the hat tree. He lit the lamp and pulling out his chair Gilbert reread the notes he’d made for his upcoming editorial beginning the process of editing before setting the type for tomorrow's paper.

          When he'd arrived in this small town it had been his goal to grow the paper to a daily publication. But weather, crop failures, lowered cattle prices, and the recession squashed that dream. Still, he was not ready to give up.

         "You will make a difference in this world, Gilbert Hopkins, you will," he said to the four walls surrounding him. "You are still young and have plenty of time."

          He was almost finished with the edits when he heard the door open. Glancing up Gilbert saw a young child about the age of eight, the small frame backlit by the setting sun.

          "’ Scuse me, sir," the child said. "Are ya the one I talk to ‘bout puttin’ a ad in the paper?"

         "Yes, I am," Gilbert replied. The little imp of a child made him wonder what kind of advertisement they were thinking of. He asked the first questions that popped into his head.  "How old are you? And what type of advertisement were you thinking of?"

          "I'm twelve, an’ I'm hopin’ ta find my mother."

Amazon

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Telling Stories Where Love & History Meet

Books: Angela Raines Books

Website: Angela Raines - author

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

How Much Scary do You Like in a Story?

Romance novels typically have a heat level rating that may be named differently depending on which author, reader, or blogger you're talking to, but essentially mean the same thing. There's sweet (sweet kisses only, no sex on the page) and steamy (open door sex scenes). And a few others that are in-between and some that go beyond that.(These are the kind I stay away from.)

If we have such a rating for heat levels on books, why haven't we any rating on scary stuff? The only website I know that uses such ratings is My Book Cave, where authors who add their books to their site are required to list by rating how much violence and/or gore is portrayed. (Of course, there may be more, but I'm not aware of them.) As a reader, I appreciate knowing the level of "scary" that I should expect when I settle in to read a novel. For instance, I know that I can't read a Harry Potter or even a Love Inspired Suspense book at night or else I'll dream about them. But I can read a romantic story with a lower level of suspense at night and be just fine.

The other part of this equation is that fictional stories need to have some kind of outer conflict, along with the main character's inner struggle, in order to move the action along. And for romantic stories, the outer conflict needs to involve more than just a misunderstanding between the couple that could be fixed in chapter five if they just talked things out. So, in an effort to present an interesting love story while keeping the content sweet or clean, most romance authors incorporate suspenseful elements. Again, the level of suspense may vary from author to author, or even from book to book.

 

About a year ago, I wrote An Agent for Meg, as part of the Pinkerton Matchmaker series, which I based off of the real-life experience of female investigative reporter Nellie Bly. Reading about the time she spent in an insane asylum on Blackwell's Island just about broke my heart. What a brave woman. Her job was to pretend to be mentally ill so she could be thrown into the asylum. There, she was able to expose the horrendous conditions under which the residents were living. Poorly prepared, moldy food, having to put on wet clothing right after taking a cold bath, and not being allowed to speak to each other--well, you can probably see where these horrible rules led. Of course the residents would be deemed insane after being subjected to such atrocities! I have no doubt that I would, too.

As a fiction writer, it's difficult to describe such demoralizing conditions without bogging down the reader emotionally, so I chose to keep that aspect on the lighter side while adding a sinister matron who wanted another woman's husband for herself, so she connived with him and the director at the asylum to declare this woman insane and lock her inside. She eventually planned this woman's demise, and might have gotten away with it had not Pinkerton agents Carl and Meg Porter found the woman just in time. To make this book even more suspenseful, I also decided to add a subtle yet effective snippet from Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "The Raven." He, of course, is known as the king of horror in his day.

I, myself, have never been in an asylum before, but I have a vivid memory from my childhood of going on a school field trip to the county jail. (Why we went there, I have no clue. Why would any teacher choose that particular place as a positive learning experience?) Anyway, I remember walking past a cell and having the prisoner--a female--stick her hand out, and in my 8-year-old mind I imagined that she was calling out for someone to get her out of there. It was a scary experience.

As one reader said in a review, "[An Agent for Meg] has some anxious moments, and some very anxious moments". (Love that!) Another reviewer said, "That tree branch scraping on the window still has me on edge." So suffice it to say that this particular Pinkerton Matchmaker story is a little more intense than some of the others, including most of mine. But there are lighter moments, too, one of which gives a nod to another Meg in literature--from Little Women. And since Meg appeared in an earlier story (An Agent for Hallie) as a spoiled young lady, I had fun humbling her a bit. She and Carl had a few earlier run-ins that made their interactions in this story enjoyable to write. Yet he was very tender to her as he realized all the struggles she had gone through with her family and was going through in the difficult circumstances in which they'd been placed. If you haven't read this story yet, I hope you will give it a try, especially since Halloween is coming up and it's time to put your spook on!

Here is where you can find An Agent for Meg: https://amzn.to/2YKHy2m

Or, click on the cover to go to the product page.

The Wolf Girl of Texas

Since Halloween is almost upon us, I will share an old tale of a haunted part of Texas and the wolf girl who prowled there, so the legend goes.

In 1835, a trapper from Georgia named John Dent and his pregnant wife Mollie traveled up Devil’s River, already a renowned haunted area, in southwest Texas. They built a brush shelter and Dent set out to trap during the spring season while Mollie approached her due date.

Dolan Falls on Devil's River

A thunderstorm struck one night in May just as Mollie went into labor. She was having trouble giving birth, so Dent rode to a Mexican goat ranch and begged for help. However, as the goat herders prepared to go with him, a bolt of lightning struck him dead. Still, the men followed Dent’s directions and after a night’s delay at the river, they arrived at the Dents’ cabin the next morning.

Tragically, they found Mollie dead. She had evidently died in childbirth, but the baby was nowhere to be found. Fang marks on the woman’s body and many wolf tracks in the area convinced the herders the infant had either been devoured or carried off by the wolves.

TEN YEARS LATER

In 1845, a young sheep herder living at San Felipe Springs (now known as Del Rio) claimed to see “a creature, with long hair covering its features, that looked like a naked girl” attacking a herd of goats along with a pack of wolves. The boy's story was ridiculed by some but taken seriously by others. Seminole scouts working for the Army refused to go into the Devil’s River country after seeing human hand and footprints mingling with tracks of wolves.

Eventually, a hunt was organized to capture the “Lobo (or Wolf) Girl of Devil’s River” as she was being called. According to the story, the hunters, mainly Mexican vaqueros, found the wolf pack and trapped the animals in a box canyon. With them was a naked girl. She fought wildly, clawing and biting, but the men lassoed her and tied her up while she made terrifying sounds like human screams and wolf howls combined. Her howls drew a huge male wolf, likely the leader of her pack. He charged at her captors but was shot dead, causing the wolf girl to faint.

Mexican wolf; wikipedia; public domain

Examining the girl, the men found she was definitely human despite her long hair and wild animal behavior. Her arms and hands were strongly muscled, and she moved smoothly on all fours but not as well when forced to stand erect. She could not speak, only growling deeply.

Put on a horse, the girl was taken to a ranch and shut in an empty room. Offered clothing and food, she refused them, instead curling up in a dark corner and snarling at anyone who came near. Left alone, she was locked in the room, with a guard outside.

As night fell, unearthly howls came from her room, unsettling her captors and drawing answering calls from wolves somewhere beyond the house. The howls came closer, and the girl gave eerie cries from her room. Finally, the pack attacked the corralled goats, cows and horses, luring the guards out to drive them away.

Amid the bedlam, the girl smashed out a boarded-up window in the room and escaped. The howls stopped and the wolves melted into the night, along with the girl, presumably.

Over the following years, people reported seeing the girl suckling pups and attacking herds of sheep and goats with the wolf pack. But she always escaped into the Devil’s River wilderness, and no one ever tracked her down. In 1852, a surveying party laying out a new route to El Paso, were riding south to the Rio Grande, above the mouth of Devil’s River, when they spotted a young woman with two pups on a sand bar in the river. When she saw them, she snatched up the pups and raced away. This was the last sighting of the wolf girl, alive that is, although there were reports of “human-faced” wolves in the area up until the 1930s.

THE GHOST OF WOLF GIRL

Is the story of the Wolf Girl true or just a folktale? There is no concrete proof either way. However, she seems to haunt her former hunting grounds.

In 1974, during a javalina (wild pigs) hunt, a man named Jim Marshall and two of his friends camped along Devil’s River. They had been hunting for four days. It was near nightfall.

According to Marshall, one man went to gather firewood, but came running back, his face white with fear. They asked him what was wrong. He said they needed to see for themselves. They followed a trail down to the water and looked around while the frightened hunter described what he had seen. At first there didn’t appear to be anything there, but then Marshall saw a figure on the opposite shore.

“The only way I can describe it,” he said, “is that it appeared to be a girl, a real skinny girl, with long hair and wild eyes. Even in the darkness we could see her. It was like she was in a haze, a kind of foggy mist, standing there partly bent over, digging into an ant mound. Suddenly whatever we were seeing was gone. I don’t know if it vanished or just moved quickly into the brush.”

The three men returned to camp and packed up to leave, working fast, keeping three large lamps lit. Once on the road, they didn’t stop until they reached Del Rio. This account is taken from GHOSTS OF THE OLD WEST by Earl Murray.

Before her husband led her into the wilderness – and to her untimely death – Mollie Dent penned a note to her parents, postmarked from Galveston in the autumn of 1834. It read:

“Dear Mother,
The Devil has a river in Texas that is all his own
and it is made only for those who are grown.
Yours with love
Mollie”

I don’t know about you, but her words kind of give me the shivers.

MAN WITH A THOUSAND FACES #SweetheartsoftheWest #history #theater

I'm taking a short break from writing about early women performers to focus on a man who was born in my adopted town. He started in theater here and went on to be known as the 'man with a thousand faces'. It seemed appropriate with the coming of Halloween. For those who are wondering the man is Lon Chaney. That is Lon Chaney Sr. not his son who was also an actor.

So who was Lon Chaney and why do I love his story and work?

From Wikipedia - Lon Chaney during production of
The Miracle Man - 1919

Lon (Leonidas Frank) Chaney was born April 1, 1883 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His maternal Grandfather founded the Colorado School for the Education of Mutes (now the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind) in 1874. His daughter Emma Alice Kennedy, was was deaf. She met Frank H Chaney, also deaf, at the school. The couple had four children, John, Lon, George and Carolin.

The story is Chaney went through fourth grade,then due to family hardship, Lon quit school to find a job and help out. News articles after his death claim he worked as a guide on Pikes Peak. He got a taste of the theater when he worked as a stage hand at the Colorado Springs Opera House in the 1890s after his brother John helped him land the job. The review for his first appearance in front of the curtain read "As a comedian he is irresistible and it would be hard to find his equal in the dancing among many first class vaudeville performers."

Lon Chaney - date unknown

It was after moving to California that Chaney started working in film. He was an actor, writer and director, but it is an an actor we know him.

Elza Schallert, magazine writer and radio host, in her article "Behind Lon Chaney's Mask" had this to say:

Lon Chaney, [as an actor] I believe, is writing his signature on the page whose ink is not yet dry. And I believe it will be in years to come a bold, vigorous impression, easy to read and remember.

Chaney is an actor who, once seen, is never forgotten. He may not win your unqualified approval, with his extreme characterizations. He may annoy you more than inspire, with his hideous makeups of clouded eyes, twisted limbs or dangling teeth and a formless head. But you remember him!

His mask may be to some a nightmare but the force of his acting is strong enough to make itself felt through a disguise of putty and false hair and iron clamps that would annihilate the most potent of actors.

And in the end, no matter how repulsive the characters he plays, no matter how implacably villainous, he always becomes a hero — a tragic one, perhaps — who gains your sympathy and touches the heart.

.Lon himself had this to say, according to the article "My Darkest Hour":

"When I saw my first picture on the screen, a comedy, I wept!" And Lon Chaney grinned cheerfully, now that it was all safely in the past. "I had been playing a musical comedy and naturally supposed I could get over in pictures. In fact, I recall thinking how I would knock Ford Sterling — cold. As I considered Sterling a great artist, you see, I was aiming high.

"Instead of dealing him a blow, I gave it to myself, I was crushed, motor mortified, discouraged — oh, desperately discourage. I thought if this is screen comedy I'll go back to cold and dill, for at least my humor was welcomed on the stage.

"Positively, I did the most unfunny things imaginable before the camera, and for the life of me I couldn't get the idea. Well, I made three attempts, each worse than the last. Then one day, disgusted with my failure, I gritted my teeth and determined I'd win or die in the attempt.

"That very afternoon I ran into Jack O'Brian out on the lot: he was directing Jeannie MacPherson who wrote this scenarios and was being featured. Harry Van Meter was the lead. O'Brian told me he was looking for a heavy. I felt so discouraged with my comedy, however, that I thought I might as well take a chance, so went at it.

"Well, I made good, and Jeannie then wrote two stories expressly for me, one had a weird hunchback role — great! This was when I began the study of makeup. In musical comedies you can paste green whiskers on your chin, do a funny little dance along with your song and get away with it, so I knew nothing about makeup, but having embarked as a heavy in motion pictures I went at it heart and soul.

That story with the weird hunchback is what launched Chaney into the stratosphere. As part of his method, Chaney wore a pack of steel on his back, a steel vice which distorted his legs and of course the heavy on his face to portray the doomed man.

Lon Chaney died August 26, 1930.

For those who only know Chaney from his drama roles, you miss so much of what made him a great silent film star. If your ever in the mood, or one of the movie stations play some of his work, go yourself a favor and watch the master at work. For those who can't wait, here's the link to Phantom:
 Phantom of the Opera (silent film 1925)

For more intense reading, I recomment the books, both by Michael F. Blake. "The Man Behind the Thousand Faces" and "A Thousand Faces: Lon Chaney's Unique Artistry in Motion Pictures"

Until next time, enjoy the remains of fall, don't eat too much Halloween candy and keep those eyes reading and those fingers writing.

For those who like the supernatural, you might enjoy the novella, "Angel of Salvation Valley". Below is an excerpt of the story of Drew and Lizzie:

Drew tried to remember the quote he used to say to get him through the days in solitary. He wanted to stop the noise, but every time he tried to recite it in his mind, his head began to sear with pain. It was an effort to hold the thought, but hold it he would. "You have power over your mind, not outside events. The choice you make defines you. Gra....". He did it, he held the thought, but the rest of the quote wouldn't come. Trying as much as he could, the rest was just out of reach. The pain was so overpowering he let it go.

Still, the conversation looped through Drew's brain over and over growing louder with each telling. Drew tried to close out the sound, but some part of his brain told him that would be useless. Between the moments of clarity, where the smell of dust and pine intruded on his memories, Drew's world twisted around the arrest, the trial, Harold, the prison break, on and on. Then his dead mother's words interrupted his thoughts.

"Andrew, what have you done?" she asked.

Drew saw her, felt he could reach out and touch her, looking just like he remembered her before she was killed in an accident..

"I didn't kill that man," Drew cried, reaching a hand toward her. After three years in prison, all in solitary, he stopped trying to make people believe. Now, he had to make sure his mother knew, but the pain in his head throbbed harder. He reached up, grabbing his head. He almost missed her words.

"I know you didn't, I'm sorry you had to suffer," she said reaching out to touch his face, abating the throbbing in his head for just a moment.

ebook- Amazon- purchase here

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Member of National League of American Pen Women,

Women Writing the West,

Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet

For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 

Photo and Poem: Click Here 

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

The Halloween Legend of Stringy Jack by Sarah J. McNeal

Stringy Jack and the Devil

People have been making jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed “Stingy Jack.” According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Another version of the coin story says that Jack was getting chased by some villagers from whom he had stolen, when he met Satan, who claimed it was time for him to die. However, the thief stalled his death by tempting Satan with a chance to bedevil the church-going villagers chasing him. Jack told Satan to turn into a coin with which he would pay for the stolen goods (Satan could take on any shape he wanted); later, when the coin (Satan) disappeared, the Christian villagers would fight over who had stolen it. The Devil agreed to this plan. He turned himself into a silver coin and jumped into Jack's wallet, only to find himself next to a cross Jack had also picked up in the village. Jack had closed the wallet tight, and the cross stripped the Devil of his powers; and so he was trapped.

In both folktales, Jack only lets Satan go when he agrees never to take his soul. After a while the thief died, as all living things do. Of course, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven; however, Satan had promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from hell as well. Jack now had nowhere to go. He asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light, and Satan mockingly tossed him an ember from the flames of Hades, that would never burn out. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which were his favorite food), put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern", or Jack-o'-lantern.

Jack-o-lanterns were also a way of protecting your home against the Undead. Superstitious people used them specifically to ward away vampires. They thought this because it was said that the Jack-o-lantern's light was a way of identifying vampires and, once their identity was known, they would give up their hunt for you.

Did You Know?

Turnip Jack-O-Lanterns

The original jack-o'-lanterns were carved from turnips, potatoes or beets.

Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” and then, simply “Jack O’Lantern.”

Potato and Turnip Jack-O-Lanterns in Scotland & Ireland

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. 

American Pumpkin Version of A Jack-O-Lantern

Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o’lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack-o’-lanterns.

These days people have become very creative carving up those Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns. Here are a few of my favorites.

This is me--not to be confused with the scary pumpkins above.

·          Sarah J. McNeal is a multi-published author of several genres including time travel, paranormal, western and historical fiction. She is a retired ER and Critical Care nurse who lives in North Carolina with her four-legged children, Lily, the Golden Retriever and Liberty, the cat. Besides her devotion to writing, she also has a great love of music and plays several instruments including violin, bagpipes, guitar and harmonica. Her books and short stories may be found at Prairie Rose Publications and its imprints Painted Pony Books, and Fire Star Press. She welcomes you to her website and social media:

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The Wildings

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The Spirit Of Mattie

By: Peggy L Henderson

Kite Hill Graveyard near Mammoth Hot Springs

Since it’s only a few days after Halloween, I thought it wouldn’t be too far out to write about ghosts and spirits. 

Several ghost stories float around about Yellowstone National Park. There is the headless bride that haunts the famous Old Faithful Inn. There is the story of the vanishing hitchhiker, several Crow and Bannock spirit legends; just to name a few. 

The one story that intrigued me was the one of Mattie’s spirit.  Not only is her story one of myth and mystery, but it is also a timeless love story.

There are two graveyards within Yellowstone National Park. One is the military yard at Fort Yellowstone, the other one is called Kite Hill near Mammoth Hot Springs, which holds fourteen civilian graves. Some of those graves are unidentified. Two of the graves are of people who committed suicide, one was murdered, and one died in an avalanche. 

There are also eight known graves scattered throughout Yellowstone. One of these graves has been of special interest to a lot of people. It is said to contain the spirit of Martha Jane Shipley Culver. She was born on September 18, 1856. She was known as Mattie all her life. 

Mattie grew up working in textile mills in Massachusetts, where tuberculosis was common. When she was seven years old, her father was killed in the Civil War, which forced her family to separate and live with various relatives. When her sister Millie married, Mattie went with them to Montana in search of a new life. The textile mills had already taken their toll on Mattie, and she might have already known that she had tuberculosis.

Mattie, her sister and brother-in-law homesteaded near Billings, Montana, and that was where she met Eugene Gillett in 1882. After a one-year marriage, Eugene died tragically of tuberculosis. 

For years, she lived alone at the Park Hotel in Billings, until she met the newly appointed manager, Ellery Culver. The two shared many of the same experiences from early childhood. Ellery served in the Civil War like Mattie’s father, and later worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad like her first husband. They married in 1886. A year later, Mattie gave birth to a daughter, Theda Culver. 

Firehole River

Ellery Culver accepted a job in Yellowstone National Park as Master of Transportation with the Yellowstone Association and set off for the park. Mattie joined him later, and the family resided at the Firehole Hotel, situated along the banks of that river.  In the fall, they returned to Billings to spend the winter there. By their second year, in 1888, Mattie knew she was dying. Her husband’s job required him to travel to nearby towns, but Mattie decided to stay in the park that she’d come to love, and she even spent the winter there rather than return to Billings. 

Mattie died on March 2, 1889. Her tombstone reads that she was thirty years old, but she was actually thirty-two. 

Nez Perce Creek Picnic Area along Firehole River. Near site of Mattie's grave

When she died, the ground was too frozen, and there was too much snow to dig a grave. Soldiers stationed in the park placed Mattie’s body in two barrels laid end to end, and covered them with snow. A week later, her husband and a friend prepared a real grave for his wife’s final resting place. They used a partition from the Firehole Hotel that had been her home, and a place that she loved, and fashioned a coffin. Ellery buried his wife along the banks of the Firehole River. 

Ellery took his one-year old daughter to live with Mattie’s sister Millie, who had moved west to Washington. Hearing  the spirit of his wife calling him back to Yellowstone, Ellery returned to work in and around the park, drawn to the Firehole area where Mattie lived and died. In 1891, the Firehole Hotel was burned down to make way for a new hotel some miles away. This left Mattie’s grave in solitude along the river.

Tragedy once again struck Ellery, when his daughter Theda became ill, and at nineteen years old, answered her mother’s call and died. 

Poor health forced Ellery to move to California, where he died in 1922. The park service would not allow his body to be buried alongside his wife in Yellowstone, and people who have visited his grave in California swear that he is not there, but has joined his beloved wife along the banks of the Firehole River. 

Many people who have visited Mattie’s grave are repeatedly drawn back to the area. It is said that her spirit walks along the riverbank, and if you listen closely, you can hear her humming to the birds and animals, and beckon you to return time and again.

 --from Yellowstone Ghost Stories

(all photos are my personal property) 

Peggy L Henderson

Western Historical and Time Travel Romance

“Where Adventure Awaits and Love is Timeless”

Author of:

Yellowstone Romance Series

Teton Romance Trilogy

Second Chances Time Travel Romance Series

Blemished Brides Western Historical Romance Series

               

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