Coloma, about those ghosts - you're kidding, right?

Sunset, Oct, 1992 by Jeff Phillips

The first thing you must understand is that this was not a dark and stormy night. It was, rather, one of those balmy, moonless spring evenings you can luck into in California's Gold Country. The sky was full of stars, crickets and frogs were singing, and the air was warm and as sweet as honeysuckle.

I should also point out that when my family and I set out for an after-dinner stroll along a deserted, darkening road in Coloma, ghosts were the last thing on our minds.

Go ahead, roll your eyes. But even now I can recall the eerie chill that enveloped us as we passed the steep hillside of the Pioneer Cemetery. There was something up among the mossy granite tombstones, and that something got me to wondering if maybe, just maybe, there is some truth to all those stories about ghosts in the Gold Country.

Although the supernatural isn't yet touted on Mother Lode tourist brochures, ask around, and in almost every old mining town along State Highway 49 you'll hear accounts of mysterious rattlings, unexplained lights, and haunting apparitions.

Gold Country writer Nancy Bradley insists that this is one of the nation's spookiest regions. Over coffee one afternoon in Coloma she explains: "With its history of hardship, greed, and violent death, the Gold Country was charged with so much spiritual energy that it's not surprising so many strange phenomena are reported."

Of course, Bradley used to write for the National Enquirer. Most other Gold Country denizens I talked to were less evangelical, repeating their tales of ghostly run--ins with a smile that warns listeners to take their words--as longtime Coloma resident and veteran park ranger Alan Beilharz says--with "a large grain of salt." They seem aware, certainly, that reports of mysterious incidents can't hurt the popularity of "ghosting" trips or the bookings at local bed-and-breakfast inns (see "Where to stay: a ghosting guide," on page 39).

But this delicious folklore thrives even when the tourists have departed. Up in Downieville, restaurateur Jerry Cirino has heard locals talk about the ghost of a young murderess named Juanita who has appeared on the Highway 49 bridge over the North Yuba River--the same bridge where, in 1851, the woman was lynched by a mob of miners.

And Placerville resident Marcus Wells insists there are happenings (open drawers, misplaced objects) on the second floor of the town's old theater building that "rate a 7 or 8 on the creep meter." In fact, most people I spoke with during a recent tour had at least one story to share. And the most persistent stories seem to focus on two separate areas: Coloma, where gold was discovered, and Nevada City, where the big mines lasted longest.

A GHOST ON THE WALL, SPIRITS IN THE MINE

Barbara Weaver, her white hair carefully coiffed and her handshake firm, would rather deal with historical facts than paranormal phenomena. And yet even she, the director of Nevada City's Firehouse Number 1 Museum, can't explain the 1880 photograph displayed at the top of the stairs. It shows a Mr. Carrigan, then president of the local Malakoff Mine, in formal seated pose, with the faint image of a boy standing at his shoulder--a boy Carrigan claimed was a younger version of himself.

According to Carrigan's story, just before the shot was taken he was reminiscing about something that had happened when he was 12 years old. When the photo was developed, the boy's image appeared. Begrudgingly, Weaver concedes that photographers who have examined the picture say it hasn't been tampered with, and that she has found nothing to indicate that Carrigan was making the whole story up.

The museum, at 214 Main Street, is open 11 to 4 daily through November 1, then Thursdays through Sundays.

Nearby, in Grass Valley, docent and retired teacher Evelyn Bachand gives tales surrounding the old Empire Mine a little more leeway. As she leads a tour group from the bright sunlight into the dark, cool confines of the mine's main shaft, Bachand recounts how miners came from Cornwall to work these gold mines in the 1860s, and how they brought with them some impish characters the miners called Tommyknockers.

The capricious Tommyknockers, "little men sort of like Irish leprechauns," might lead the miners to gold one day and torment them with pranks the next. But their mischief was tolerated, because, in exchange for the crusts that miners left from their meat pie lunches, the Tommyknockers warned of dangerous bracings or buildups of lethal gases by knocking on the shaft's walls. As the group peers down the timbered hole to the subterranean tunnels dug by these miners, Bachand says, "Sometimes when you're really quiet, you can still hear them tapping."

I love it. Our group, relieved to be out of the sun, listens obediently as the cool, heavy air washes up the shaft. But suddenly, the lights flicker and from down the shaft comes a loud creaking. Next to me, a little boy's eyes get big, and he whispers, "What was that?"

Bachand doesn't say. But later 84-year-old Bob Paine, onetime mayor of Nevada City, tells me (and yes, he's got that smile) that the sound was indeed Tommyknockers. "I used to hear them all the time when I was working near the mines," he says. And when I press him, Paine keeps up his front: "To be honest, the only reason you don't hear much about them anymore is because, with the mines closed, they're all unemployed."