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Noah Brooks (1830-1910) http://tinyurl.com/NBrooks

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A Strange Feeling

From "The Haunted Valley," 1868. Read Online

Reader: Wm Leslie Howard

From California's forests, abandoned valleys and remote mountaintops come innumerable accounts of the inexplicable. Are these merely tall tales, or truthful but fantastical stories?

In "The Haunted Valley," writer Noah Brooks tells Mariposa Bill's story about the artist George Wilder, who was supposedly slaughtered by a ghost tracking him through the Sierras.

. . . Wilder had a strange feeling that some one was near him; and he peered curiously into the darkness of the inner cave with a vague notion that he might see some being. Laughing at his half-shaped fear, which was perhaps no new feeling to him, he turned toward the mouth of the cave, and to his astonishment saw rising slowly up the cataract...a colossal Shape. The face was that of a man, and was turned full toward him, so that he saw it clearly. The forehead was broad, noble and colorless, and about the majestic temples white hair curled scantily, as ocean spray curls around some wave-worn rock. The eyes were of a deep and tender blue, and were fixed upon the startled artist with a look full of stern but not unkindly expression. The face wore and appearance of great age, but of great vigor; full of repose, yet vital with goodness; sublime but winning, it was a countenance never to be forgotten.

Noah Brook's ghost story appeared in Overland Monthly in 1868.