Mining tragedies, locomotive accidents and countless other Gilded Age deaths have haunted Wilkeson’s history. Some folks believe that the remains of emotions left during intense events can become caught in a place, making appearances that transcend time.
Though a little outfield, such supernatural situations have become a wheelhouse for Wilkeson.
As if a premonitory Field of Dreams disembodied voice had called to the community, “If you build it, they will come”, industrious early 1900s Wilkeson built a baseball field.
Smalltown influence knew they could find hope amongst the hardship by providing a home team to root for. All of Wilkeson would take to the ballgame and those not cheering were ejected from the crowd.
Warming up for this article, I asked the Wilkeson community to PM me their ghost stories. I was looking for hauntings with historical evidence, something a recent TikTok video inaccurately boasts of a back-in-the-day Wilkeson brothel.
The people did not disappoint.
Like how the residents and businesses of the past rallied over baseball, modern Wilkeson is energized with team spirit over their spirits. Folks traded paranormal experiences as if they were swapping favored ball players within the mines, including several stories surrounding severed limbs and phantom pains.
“I swear a ghost opened our back door, shut it, then opened our wood stove door and shut it,” Ashley Murphy, Town Councilmember for Community and Tourism, said about her family’s first home in Wilkeson.
Undeterred by the experience, the Murphy family now resides in one of Wilkeson’s many historic homes, known as the Abraham’s House, where Ashley shared with me the chilling fact that an amputation had once taken place on a kitchen table in her home.
The history surrounding the bone-tingling account is written in Carbon River Coal Country by Nancy Irene Hall:
“…William [Abraham] had lost a leg. One evening, he had gone up to walk his brother, Gus, home after work. Often, he would walk the mile to the mine to wait for Gus. That evening, while waiting on the tracks, a careless worker in the powerhouse let an engine get away. Rushing down the tracks, the engine struck young William in the leg, injuring him so severely that the leg had to be removed.
Young William’s leg was buried in the family’s yard. He continued having a tremendous amount of pain and discomfort in the stump, so the leg was dug up and the box opened. The family carefully straightened the leg and toes and reburied it in the Knights of Pythias cemetery. Folks believed that the pain would leave when the leg was laid to rest in a comfortable position.
The loss of the leg severed William’s career as a ballplayer. He had been working on a deal with the Chicago Cubs when the unfortunate accident occurred.”
Phantom pain partially proves paranormal but doesn’t quite knock it out the park.
In an interview, Coach Bob Walker, retired now after 32 years with White River High/Middle School, revealed the spooky story he tells the neighborhood kids:
“I had a friend, Lynn Johnsey, who lived on the bottom of the hill back here. House is no longer there. It was an old yellow house that sat right next to the hill. We were friends, so we’d spend the night at Lynn’s house. As we were sleeping, we’d hear “thump…thump…thump…” going across the roof.
We got out our flashlights and we’d go outside and look around. All we could see was footprints, but from only one foot!”
Was this the historical homerun I was hoping for?
“So, all of us guys were talking,” continued Coach, a tableful of sorted baseball cards in the room behind him, “and it come out that it was Paul Barrett’s foot because we knew that Paul Barrett had a foot buried up above Lynn’s house. The ghost of the foot had come to visit. We’d all not sleep that night. It happened two or three times.”
Barrett’s leg blocked Abraham’s from the plate.
Again, Nancy Irene Hall filled me in on the double-header with an excerpt from Dateline: Wilkeson, a collection of early newspaper articles of the area:
“April 14, 1899
Master Paul Barrett of our town met with a sad and serious accident on Saturday afternoon. While stealing a ride on Claude Cleman’s buggy and being told by Claud to stay off, Claude not knowing he was on, started up the horses and in some way the boy got hung in the wheel and when discovered his leg was so badly broken as to make amputation necessary. The limb was taken off above the knee, but it is doubtful if the little fellow will recover from the shock. This is certainly a warning to many other small boys of this town who steal rides on vehicles and trains.”
Ok, so, who’s foot is on first?
The bases continued to load as tales of invisible beings stomped heavily around attics, hallways, staircases, and rooftops. Restaurants, the now-extinct Wilkeson Library, and the famous Sandstone Quarry competed with stories of shadow people, glowing orbs, and apparitions dressed in various period attire, ranging from pre-1900 petticoats to ‘50s white t-shirts and jeans.
“We found his name written on the wall,” Felicia Ford, owner of Nomad coffee, commented of their business ghost, Woody, who seems a bit of a switch-hitter, “Sometimes he knocks things over for no reason. Sometimes he turns on our coffee machine and has it warmed up for us by the time we get there. So, he’s not all that bad. We leave a little cup of coffee for him when we close”.
Carol Sellers, former bartender at the Pick-N-Shovel, threw this yakker, “I was closing late one night, when an old bluesy song came randomly on the juke box. I’d never heard the song before, so went to see what song it was. It was not listed. As I searched, someone slapped me hard on the butt, so hard my pelvis hit the juke box. There was no one there!”
An audio recording from inside Town Hall was sent to me of an invisible ghost train whistling down railroad tracks no longer there. After the sound had stopped, a bird crashed dead into a window. The frightened recorder snapped a photo at the time, and the experience now provides for good, modern-day documentation.
In my home, pranksters like to play ball after the children have gone to bed. My husband or I can enter a room, turn around to walk out, and immediately trip over bulky items strategically placed in the previously empty doorway.
On Saturday, Oct. 29, Wilkeson will be offering a series of Halloween-themed events, to include a Trunk-or-Treat at Town Hall (vehicle entry fee donated to the Buckley Food Bank), a Ghostly 5K Trail Run put on by All Things Fun Sports, and a “SPOOK-Easy” cocktail crawl through the Historic Business District, poured by the Wilkeson Booster Club.
Even though the miner’s baseball diamond has long since departed, I believe the community has found the sweet spot.
Wilkeson may be haunted but it’s not giving up the ghost.
