Image: Description (from Wikimedia)
A vestige of an early 20th-century copper mining camp, Kennecott represents the mining techniques of the era. The mines here were among the nation's largest and contained the last of the great high-grade copper ore deposits of the American West.
(In the public domain)
Date 1 January 2013, 00:00
Source Kennecott Mines
Author National Park Service, Alaska Region

Poetry Potlatch Challenge: Write a Monotetra poem on the topic of a spooky or scary tale or urban legend from where you live.

An excerpt from the Princess Lodges Blog: https://www.princesslodges.com/blog/alaska-travel-tips/scary-mary-and-other-ghost-stories-from-alaska/


Alaska's lucrative yet precarious mineral wealth has sent many men and women to their early graves. In the case of the Kennecott Copper Mines, an entire community of ghosts worked in cahoots to prevent redevelopment of the area.

Located near Wrangell St. Elias National Park, the Kennecott mines were some of the richest ever plundered in the remote Alaskan wilderness, and the railroad built to transport the harvested copper down to the coast was a monument to the crazy things that people will do for profit. Known as the Copper River & Northwestern Railway (or "Can't Run & Never Will" to skeptical locals), many men perished while creating a railroad that crossed glaciers, chasms, and required tunneling through rock.

By all accounts, these men stuck around, even though no rail car has creaked over the abandoned railroad tracks in more than 70 years. After the railroad halted and the boom towns disbanded, visitors traveling along a stretch of road near Chitina bordering the railway reported tombstones appearing and disappearing on the roadside. Things got really spooky when a housing project was planned near the old tracks: workers could barely concentrate as the wraithlike voices of miners and children echoed in the mountains. They saw ghostly figures and then, to add insult to injury, tools began to fly straight out of their tool belts, never to be seen again. Soon after, work in the area ceased.




My Personal Experience

I have actually been to Kennecott and would love to go back and explore it further someday. Quite literally, the people in the town appear to have just left in the middle of their meals and leaving most of their belongings and just abandoned this town. I didn't see or hear any ghosts, but I do know how eerie things felt, as the man describes in the video. It is a fascinating town set in beautiful scenery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangell%E2%80%93St._Elias_National_Park_and_Preserve

Another chilling story would be about a mass murder in the tiny town of McCarthy a few miles away - these are two tiny towns that you can't even drive into... you have to shuttle or cross the river bridge on foot to even reach them. It is quite unique. I wonder if the ghosts were responsible for driving that man mad? (He who was responsible for that heinous crime.) https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/03/02/Six-killed-in-Alaskan-shooting-spree/9659415429200/

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