Spooky Yellowstone

While we were in Montana, on the way up to Glacier, we stopped for a few hours in the town of Livingston. Long considered the "gateway to Yellowstone", Livingston has had a long history of locomotive activity and tourism, and we spent time in their local railway museum. While there, I purchased a book about hauntings in Yellowstone, because I was not aware there were any, and it seemed like it might be neat to learn about them before we went there.

Title: Spooky Yellowstone: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore

Author: S. E. Schlosser

© 2013

Schlosser is a storyteller with a literature degree, who also developed and maintains AmericanFolklore.net, a site which collects folklore from across North and Central America, with legends from all fifty states. Her book, Spooky Yellowstone, draws on a wide variety of resources, including websites, newspapers, personal interviews, and texts.

The book opens with a map of Yellowstone marking places where the various sightings Schlosser recounts took place. I appreciated the inclusion of such a map, not only because it gives a visual of the spread of incidents across the park, but also because it makes it easier to compare to an actual map and find potential ghost-sighting routes. I wasn't able to convince my family to go ghost-hunting (we were a little pressed for time as it was), but we did pass by some allegedly haunted areas, which was neat to make note of.

Part One of the text retells 13 different accounts of ghost sightings, some of them modern and some of them hearkening back to the early days of the national park. My personal favorite was the story of a ghost train on the Cinnabar track ruts. While some of them felt more authentic than others, these were stories which on the whole were fairly straightforward tales of the paranormal.

Part Two goes on to describe other miscellaneous occurrences outside the explicable. Some of them resemble hauntings in nature, or, as in Fire!, examples of psychometry in action, with participants accidentally touching on a strong memory related to an area. Others were stranger, including one Bigfoot sighting, and one story of black magic gone wrong which was a bit too far-fetched for me.

Spooky Yellowstone was an interesting text with some stories that make me wish all the more that we could have spent longer exploring the national park. That being said, some of them also struck me as being a bit dubious. Was it fun to read? Yes. However, I would not call it a comprehensive guide to finding ghosts in Yellowstone. For me, it probably falls into that category of books which I liked, but did not need to pay full price for.

July 9th, 2016

Well, you know what they say about a road paved with good intentions... It seems like every time I think it might be calming down enough that I could update this blog regularly, life decides to have a laugh at my expense. June was very, very busy between a vacation, bridal shower, and almost every conceivable sort of family issue. Anyway, I am back. I have some pictures from our trip that I will share (I'd been hoping to liveblog it, but the hotels we stayed in usually didn't have wifi), at least to start things off.

Mussel shell on a lake shore in Albert Lea, MN.

The Corn Palace, Mitchell, SD.

The Badlands National Park, SD.

Big horned sheep (with a baby!) in the Badlands, SD.

Mt. Rushmore in SD.

Devil's Tower National Park in SD.

Little Bighorn National Cemetery, SD.

Lakota prayer cloths tied to a bush in Little Bighorn, SD.

Sunset over Colombia Falls, MT.

Glacier National Park, MT.

McDonald Falls in Glacier, MT.

Rocks on the riverbank in Glacier, MT.

Mountains on Going to the Sun Rd. in Glacier, MT.

Snow melting into a waterfall in Glacier, MT.

Mammoth Hot Springs at Yellowstone National Park, WY.

An enormous chunk of Aventurine next to my foot; apparently it's a fairly rare stone, but happens to occur in a small town in Montana.

The Paint Pots in Yellowstone, WY.

Blue Star Spring in Yellowstone, WY.

Old Faithful Geyser erupting in Yellowstone, WY.

Grand Tetons National Park, WY.

Overall, it was a really cool trip. There was a lot of driving, but we got to see lots of amazing scenery and wildlife. I brought home some stones, of course, and a book, which I will eventually get to writing about, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy the photos, and I apologize for the long break from posting.

October 10th, 2015

I'm officially home for fall break! I'm off school through Tuesday, so I took the train back, and then my family met me and we had lunch in the city.

We decided we'd go walk around a new park, and the weather was perfect.

One feature which I especially got a kick out of was this:

The end of the pathway ended in a roundabout, and had slabs of stone set up to align with the sun on the solstices and equinoxes. I suppose it just seemed rather Pagan to me.

September 16th, 2015

I'm very excited - I'm hoping to go to a group Mabon ritual this weekend with some community members and other students on campus!

The ritual is this Saturday at a nearby state park, and we'll also be enjoying a potluck dinner and maybe camping, although that will depend on site availability. I volunteered to help distribute food for the Cakes and Ale ceremony, and we also were asked to bring a piece of produce to put on the altar besides our potluck dish.

I'm planning to bring this red bell pepper; originally, I had just been going to get an apple or something, but the campus' sustainable garden was selling these today for $0.25 each! 

As for dinner, water signs (I'm a Pisces) are supposed to bring a vegetable/side dish, so I'm going to go to Walmart tomorrow to get some things for a salad. I'll keep you all posted!

June 25th, 2015

It's been an exciting afternoon! My grandparents took us over to a nearby park for an afternoon of bocce ball and card games. While we were there, Nick and I climbed down a steep trail to a creek running back through the trees. He went off and explored, but I stayed near the stream bed, looking for rocks. I found a whole bunch of neat ones!

There was plenty of Quartz, of course. Making up about 12% of the earth's crust, it's an extremely abundant mineral. I've identified them as follows:

• Far left: Medium grain Quartz crystals mixed with pink Feldspar; probably some type of granite
• Left: A sedimentary rock of some kind (some sort of Jasper, I think) with Quartz growing out the top of it.
• Top right: A massive (as in, rock-like rather than crystal-point, not as in "huge") chunk of Quartz
• Bottom right: A smaller, more translucent piece of massive Quartz
• Far right: Quartzite pebble

I was also excited to find some pieces of what look to me like Unakite. Unakite is the combination of green Epidote with pink Feldspar. The distribution of the two wasn't the most balanced across all the pieces I found. In particular, I think the bottom left is Epidote and Quartz, while the bottom right looks like Epidote and Slate.

And then I found some miscellaneous stones.

• Top left: Granite; when I picked this one up, there were some neat blue flecks in it which were really pretty.
• Bottom left: Not sure yet what this is; it's probably sedimentary, although it has more rings than it seems to layers. I don't think it's an Agate, though.
• Middle: Fossils! I thought maybe it was just some rock conglomerate when I picked it up, but then I was looking at it more closely, and it does appear to have at least some fossilized bones in it.
• Top right: Red Jasper? It looked more like some when it was wet. I don't know how I could find out for sure, since I don't have the equipment for a streak test, or really to test hardness, either.
• Bottom right: This is probably more pink Feldspar, but it looked a bit like Rhodochrosite, which I know occurs in neighboring states, so I figured I'd keep it just in case.

Ultimately, I'm very much an amateur where identifying my own stones goes, so if you see anything you recognize, by all means, let me know!

April 4th, 2015

Last weekend, my family came down to visit, and we got to visit a couple of places I think you all might be interested in.

For starters: Castle Park! This memorial park is a bit D&D inspired, and is full of all kinds of statues of dragons, and wizards, and other mystical creatures. There's also a giant castle-playground. I'd love to go again in costume sometime, but for now, I'll just post a few pictures.

It'd be a really interesting place for a ritual, I would think, except that it is, ultimately, a Christian memorial for a teen who was killed in a car crash, and I wouldn't want to be disrespectful. In any case, a fun spot for magick workers and casual fantasy fans alike.

We also went to Garden of the Gods Wilderness Area in Shawnee. More than 300 million years ago, erosion exposed these huge sandstone bluffs, which had been left in turn from an ancient shallow sea. Check this place out:

These patterns in the rock are called liesegang bands - iron in the sandstone rusted, and so doesn't erode as quickly as the regular sandstone. This leaves the complex ridges and swirls in the rock visible here.

This formation is called the Devil's Smokestack; it occurred to me that these pillars of rock could act as focuses of energy, much like the natural version of a stone cairn. In a setting like this, there really was no way to get close to it, but even at a distance I was really struck by it.  

We also visited this place called Cave-in-Rock, but it had just rained and so the river had flooded the whole area out. 

It was a really nice day of hiking in the good weather, and a good way to reconnect to the earth element. I'm so glad it's finally getting warmer!

August 4th, 2014

Happy belated Lammas to everybody! Why didn't I post sooner? I'll tell you why! Because the first weekend of August just passed, and you know what that means. Yes! It means that I just spent all weekend at the local World of Faeries Festival!
Once again, it was an amazing experience. There are few things more novel to a Pagan living in a Christian household than getting out for a weekend to mingle at a predominantly Pagan-run event. For the 10th anniversary of the Faery Fest, the theme was Year of the Dragon. There was two days of great music (if you've never heard of Randy Granger or Frenchy and the Punk, check them out), a quest game for the children, bubbles, sword fighting, fresh air, and sun. I got a complimentary wholeness blessing, and even saw a hummingbird winging its way over the flower garden. As per my usual, I bought a bunch of new accessories and several new stones, but before I get into posting about those, I want to share some pictures.

Welcome!

Me in my steampunk Time Faery costume, holding an adorable little woodsprite critter made by the esteemed Dragon Lady. I, unfortunately, did not have the means to pay the adoption fee, but if you'd like to see more of her work, check it out here.

Water Faery.

Statue Lady.

Dragon ice cream.

One of the vendors with Tommy, the Peregrine Falcon.

The fairgrounds.

Bird Man dances.

Friends appear in unexpected places.

A mermaid!

Additionally, it seems only fair to help spread the word about some of the wonderful vendors. Besides the Dragon Lady, whose work is linked up above, I got the business cards of several other people. Not all of them are necessarily Pagan, but they do high-quality, handmade work.

• Eliza C. Stockfisch: watercolor and digital artist, custom masks, and crafts. www.etsy.com/shop/eis4artist
• Annette Powell: fairy houses and gardens. etsy.com/shop/fairyellagarden
• Christina Loraine: paintings, art, and magnets (animals and dreamscapes). etsy.com/shop/ChristinaLoraineART
• Catherine B. Torres: Goddess gowns, vests, corsets, and soy meditation candles. swsilverlark@gmail.com
• Crystal River Gifts: crystals, jewelry, oil, candles, incense, etc. 1 (244) 535-8708
• Joe and Lisa Rothengass: wire wrapped and beaded jewelry, stones and crystals, stone readings. www.maplehousearts.com

October 8th, 2011

Yesterday evening, around 4:30, my friend Hazelnut came over for the night. We had a mini Samhain celebration, and blessed pumpkin pie pop tarts as cakes. Then today, we walked over to the park and enjoyed more beautiful weather. Here are some photos of Hazelnut and the lake:

I love the reflection of the trees in the water. Don't they look pretty? :)Hazelnut actually just set up her own blog, which you can find at hazelnutsmagickblog.blogspot.com . You should check it out, 'cause she's really awesome. There's going to be a meteor shower tonight, so we're going to her house to watch it!