Unlike any city in America, Virginia City epitomizes the notion of a western boom-and-bust ghost town. The Comstock Silver Rush lured wealth seekers from around the world, including a young Samuel Clemens. Despite the fortune some found, not all of the town's earliest settlers rest easy. Shops, hotels, boardwalks and cemeteries are said to be filled with the supernatural remnants of Virginia City's hardscrabble characters and their violent propensities. The queen of haunted Nevada, Janice Oberding, mines Virginia City's spectral history, from the ghost of Henry Comstock to the ghostly Rosie and William of the Gold Hill Hotel. An independent historian, Janice Oberding is a past docent of the Nevada Historical Society and Fourth Ward School Museum in Virginia City. The author of numerous books on Nevada's history, true crime, unusual occurrences and hauntings, she speaks on these subjects throughout the state. Her Ghosthunting 101 and Nevada's Quirky Historical Facts classes for Community Education at Truckee Meadows Community College have been well received. Haunted Virginia City By Janice Oberding The History Press Copyright © 2015 Janice Oberding All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62619-947-7 Contents Foreword, by Debbie Bender, Acknowledgements, Introduction, 1. Rush to Washoe: Quest for Silver, The Unfortunate Grosh Brothers, The Ghost of Henry Comstock, Old Virginny, Sandy and Eilley Bowers: The First Comstock Millionaires, The International Hotel, Samuel Clemens Comes to Town, The 601 Vigilance Committee, 2. Lore, Legends and Hauntings, Silver Terrace Cemetery, The Murder of Julia Bulette, John Millian Is Hanged, He Owned a Restaurant, Six-Mile Canyon, The Red Camel, The Ghost of Peter Larkin, Ghost Tabby, Suicide and the City, Ghost Adventures Live Ghost Hunt Takes to the Basement, The Washoe Seeress, Superstitious Miners, The Tragedy of the Jones Boys, Séances and Fortunetellers, Pine Trees at the Firehouse Restaurant, Motorcyclist on Geiger Grade, Walks Down D Street, Old Lady at the Gold Strike, The Faceless Phantom, Ghost Dog of D Street, Writers on the Comstock, Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, Upstairs at the Virginia City Visitor's Center, 3. There's a Ghost in My room: Haunted Hotels, Cowboy Ghost at the Gold Hill, Rosie and William at the Gold Hill Hotel, Miners' Cabin, Dreams at the Sugar Loaf Motel, The Silver Queen, Florence Ballou Edwards and the Silver Dollar Hotel, 4. Haunted Comstock Locations, Fourth Ward School Museum, Virginia City Middle School, Silver State National Peace Officers Museum, The Delta Saloon and Casino, The Death of General Jacob Van Bokklen, St. Mary's Art Center, Piper's Opera House, MacKay Mansion, St. Mary's in the Mountains, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, The Chollar Mansion, Television Show Notes and Ghosts, Haunted Bars and Restaurants, Comstock Antiques, Home Sweet Haunted Home, 5. The Washoe Museum, The Washoe Club: Beginnings, Séance with the Ghost Adventures Team, Ghostly Child, Who Is in the Crypt?, What the Tour Guide Saw and Heard, Investigating the Washoe Club, Epilogue, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 Rush to Washoe Quest for Silver The Unfortunate Grosh Brothers If anyone has a reason to haunt the canyon areas around Virginia City, it would be Hosea and Ethan Allen Grosh. And yet, their ghosts don't seem to wander here. Their tragic story starts with the California gold rush that began in 1848 with James Marshall's gold discovery on the American River in California. Thousands of men said goodbye to families and friends and headed west. In the spring of 1849, the two sons of Reverend Aaron B. Grosh said farewell to friends and family in Reading, Pennsylvania, and set out for the placer mines of California. Like so many others, they arrived at the placer mines of El Dorado County in search of spectacular riches. Urged on by dreams of gold nuggets sparkling in the streams and rivers of California, they stayed long after the gold rush ended. Still clinging to their hopes of striking it rich, they waited for the next big opportunity. Before that chance came, California became a state. On that same day in 1850, the United States Congress, by Organic Act, created the Utah Territory, which incorporated most of what is modern-day Nevada. In 1852, word began to spread of a gold discovery in the far-flung region of the Utah Territory. Like they had to California, men came scurrying to Gold Canyon (near present-day Virginia City) in search of the riches that had eluded them in California. Among them were Hosea and Ethan Allen Grosh. They soon learned that this region of the Utah Territory was vastly different from lush and green California. This was a land of sagebrush, scraggly pines, dust and rock. Unlike the gold rush of California, where gold was found in rivers and streams, this gold was located in an arid, high desert region, and it was being pulled from the ground. T