Speaker 1: Ghost Stories of the Rocky Mountains written by Barbara Smith,
published by Long Pine Publishing, The Ghost Ranch. There's no
question that the Ghost Ranch near Sinker Creek and southwestern
Idaho is haunted. These debatable points are simply who haunts
the place and how long it has been haunted. Some
say that the ranch is possessed by the evil spirits
of either Dick or Sally Thomas, and those folks just
might be correct. There's also a possibility that the mysterious
disappearances of mister and missus Thomas themselves might actually be
attributed to a different spirit with an evil agenda, one
that has resided in the area for a very long time.
The facts of the story follow. As the principles are
no longer around to answer questions, we must from the
remaining specifics each draw our own conclusions. In eighteen eighty one,
Dick Thomas was twenty five years old. He emigrated from
England to profit from the mining opportunities in the Rocky Mountains.
Sally presumably was close to her husband's age that she
was a friendly young woman and known for sure. Some
folks might have gone so far as to say that
she was too friendly. Those holding with that opinion, were
decidedly surprised when Tom decided to marry her. Despite the gossip,
the two settled down to ranch life in the foothills.
The isolation of their homestead didn't prevent word of their
frequent and violent arles from getting out. Many people in
the nearby Silver City were all aware that the Thomases
had a rocky and noisy relationship. The pair split up
and then got back together again more times than anyone
cared to count. On more than one occasion, Dick accused
Sally of attempting to murder him. Theirs was clearly not
a match made in heaven. The marriage continued along this
bumpy road for fifteen years until the spring of eighteen
ninety six, when neighbors noted that both Sally and Dick
had not been seen for a while. Upon investigation, it
appeared that the two had, to all intents and purposes,
disappeared off the face of the earth. At the deserted homestead, however,
everything seemed to be pretty much in order. The couple's
horses were all in the barn, as well as the
saddles and the wagons. The interior of the house gave
every indication that the people who lived there did not
intend to be away for any length of time, but
would be back at any moment. The table was set
for a meal on food now spoiling filled with pots
on the stove. Dick's wallet lay on a chair, and
the cup was closed. When in the closets, all except
Dick's good suit, which oddly was missing. Thoroughly Confused, the
members of the search party brought in the scope of
their efforts to the surrounding land. On the nearby river bank,
they found the body of the cup was dog. Someone
or something had crushed the poor animal's skull. By now
everyone knew that the sheriff, a man named John Joyce,
would have to be called in, and he was. Joyce
determined that Sally tried to buy a large amount of
poison not long before the cup would disappear. Many folks
immediately jumped to the conclusion that Sally had murdered her
husband before sneaking away to a fresh shart in life.
To the subsequent developments not substantial holes in that theory.
The first was when well respected men from the area
began believing that they were seeing Dick Thomas in various
parts of the Northwest. Although these sightings were some distance
from Sinker Creek. The people who claimed to have seen
Dick reported that they were sure of the person whom
they'd seen, and that he most assuredly wasn't dead. The
second determinant of Sally's innocence was unearthed in eighteen ninety
eight a school found in what had been the couple's property.
Physicians readily identified it belonging to the middle aged woman
who had been dead at least two years. With that declaration,
Saally Thomas's name was effectively cleared. Sally's sister and her husband,
the Murphys, took over the Thomas ranch not long after
it had been vacated. Although they probably weren't immediately recognized
as such, signs of a haunting began almost as soon
as they moved in, and those signs were not benign.
An angry presence was definitely at work. One day, Missus
Murphy was not unconscious when a rock hurled at her
struck her head. Mister Murphy searched the surrounding area, but
was not able to find any indication that anyone had
been on the land. When the following autumn, the couple's
hired man went missing. The Murphys decided that they had
more than enough of living on that ranch. They moved
to the city. The move didn't prevent them from hearing
about the partial corps found near their former home. Neither
the disappearance of the hired man nor his apparent murderer
were ever explained, but by then locals had dubbed the
place the Ghost Ranch. This designation, of course, caused the
value of the property to plummet, which in turn made
it an attractive investment opportunity. A family named Brooks bought
the place for a song and settled in, just as
the Thomas's and the Murphys had done before them. The
Brookses stayed only until the day after their sun had
gone to investigate strange noises coming from the barden. The
young man never returned from his mission. His parents found
him dead on the barn floor. His school had been crushed.
Owning the property no longer held any appeal for the Brokseys.
They sold the place and immediately put as much distance
as possible between themselves and the Ghost Ranch. Strange stories
about the ranch verging on the supernatural, continued to circulate
well into the twentieth century. But not all of them
had tragic overtones. A man named Jack Hunt reported that
when he arrived with his horse drawn ragon at the
barn near the haunted ranch, and a visible stable hand
helped him to unbridle his horse. This unsolicited and unseen
assistance frightened him so much that he ran to the
nearest occupied house. Jack and the men who accompanied him
back to the barn were anguish to see that in
a few minutes that it had taken Jack to round
up the others, all the remaining horses on his team
had been tended to and put away for the night,
and their stalls. No explanation for the mysterious good deed
was ever found, and another account that involves a ghostly
good deed to men. Williams and Bear camped near Sinker
Creek one night and built a small sage brush fire
for warmth. Since they expected it to only last a
few hours, they were puzzled that it kept burning well
into the following morning because neither of the men had
been awake during the night to add wood. So whatever
or whoever possessed the Foothills Ranch back in the late
eighteen hundreds may have been predominantly evil. But was apparently
capable of at least some kindness, or there could have
been both evil and kindly spirits at large in the area.
In any event, this haunting is so well entranced in
the area of folklore that it is spoken of to
this day. There are many who firmly believe that the
ghosts of Dick and Sally Thomas still haunt the area.
An investigation of the history of the land before the
Thomases came to own it, however, confuses this situation considerably.
An article in True Was Magazines October nineteen ninety eight issue,
writer Hanged makes the following statement about the location of
the ill fetched ranch it was. He writes the site
of several early day tragedies, including the destruction of an
entire wagon train in eighteen sixty. Since a piece of
information should perk up the ears of any true ghost hunter,
is a Sinker Creek sight haunted by either Sally or
Dick Thomas, Or were they also victims of a terrible
presence left behind by some earlier fatal disaster. After all,
their dog had met a fate similar to what befell
the Brooks Boy, and their own disappearances were in fact
only two in what became a series of mysterious departures
is what most ghost stories. Many questions remain unanswered. The
fact remains that a very unnatural presence haunts a well
known ghost ranch.