A lost treasure, mysterious skeleton and cries from deep within the earth haunted a Wyoming family more than 80 years ago on their homestead near Badwater Creek in Fremont County.
Badwater Creek earned its name from the tribes that had suffered along its banks. The usually placid stream was known to turn into a raging torrent at a moment’s notice. Oral history tells of the people and tepees who were tragically swept away in the flash flood, thus the name of Badwater.
In 1940, near this ill-fated creek, Oran, his wife Catherine “Babe” Lichty, and her son Ray Frye moved 18 miles northwest of Arminto, Wyoming. They were aware of the danger the peaceful stream could cause; however, they were ignorant of another horror they would soon encounter.
Secrets Of The Old Boston Place
Their homestead, known as the old Boston place, had no cellar so they decided to build one.
It was early October 1940 and Lichty hired a man named Larson, a local sheepherder and prospector, to help. A 15-year-old Frye was also recruited for the project that Lichty predicted would take two or three days to dig with a slip and team of horses.
According to Mary Helen Hendry, author of “Tales of Old Lost Cabin And Parts Thereabout,” the place Lichty selected for the cellar was on the side of a slight rise near their log house.
By tunneling directly into the side of the rise and gouging out a “large notch,” a good-sized cellar room could be dug. Log timbers would be used to support the stringers across the top where the roof would be mounded above ground with dirt from the digging for insulation.
“The morning that Oran harnessed the horses to the slip for the digging of the new cellar was such a fine morning on Bad Water that the birds in the cottonwoods along the creek found much to sing about,” Hendry wrote. “The rush and s-s-s-h-h-hing of water rolling over the stones in the creek held the promise of ample waters for irrigating the meadows already greening with spikes of native hay.
“The sun was warm and the wind held its breath, sighing only enough to rattle the dried rye grass at the edge of the road.”
Lichty started his team and set the slip in motion. The slip, a scoop-shaped implement, raked and gathered the first load of bleached fine, clay dirt known as gumbo.
Larson and Frye then hurried to the loaded slip and heaved it on edge, tipping it over as Lichty released the catches. The two dumped the load of dirt, straightened the implement and waved for Lichty to proceed.
“Oran made another pass with the slip, hitting a few rocks which rolled down the gentle slope and out of the way,” Hendry wrote. “As the slip cut deeper into the bank, the clay soil became moist and more difficult to dig. The color was streaked with red, gray and yellow, but the men did not take time to admire the colors. They were too busy trying to drive the slip blade through the balling and packing clay.”
Suddenly, Lichty pulled up the horses, and his wife, who was watching from the cabin, could hear him yelling. She looked outside in time to see him waving his arms for the two to stop dumping the gumbo.
The teenager and hired man stared at him for a moment, and then the three of them dived into the pile of dirt and began pawing through it like “hounds after a badger!”
Catherine Lichty dropped her dish towel and ran out.
The Ruby Ring
According to journalist Paula Thronburg of the Thermopolis Independent Record, Lichty called out to his wife, “I saw a ring. A ring with a big red stone. It gleamed in the sun as I drove the slip but before I could stop the team or say anything, Ray and Larsen dumped the slip right on top of it.”
She dropped down on her hands and knees to join them, digging through the clods of gumbo for the mysterious red ring. But it had disappeared.
“Lichty believed that the ring was set with a sizable ruby because of the way it had shone in the sun,” Thronburg wrote. “Since Oran had considerable experience in mining, his assumption was likely to be correct.”
They reluctantly gave up their futile search and resumed their work. Catherine Lichty returned to the kitchen, disappointed.
The men dug another 4 or 5 feet and came upon a place which was blackened and different from the surrounding clay. The place appeared to have been burned.
When Catherine Lichty glanced out her door to check on the progress of the project, she was surprised to see that work had stopped once more. She once again made her way to the work site.
“The men were strangely quiet,” Hendry wrote. “Carefully, they moved soil away from an area which was blackened and different from the surrounding clay. The place appeared to have been burned. Catherine drew closer and before she could ask “what?”… her eyes were drawn to the blackened area again. There, before her lay a human skeleton!”
Five arrowheads were scattered among the bones.
The Skeleton
News had spread like wildfire through the community. The Casper Star-Tribune reported on the find Oct. 8, 1940.
“The skeleton was found about 100 yards east of the old Joe Moore place, now owned by Ernest Bostelman,” the editor wrote. “It was curled up and was about two and a half feet underground. A fire had been built over the grave, evidently to keep off marauding animals.
“Five arrowheads were found among the bones, one of them a very fine specimen. The youth collected all the remains and had not yet decided what to do with them.”
Frye fetched a cardboard box, and the bones were placed within. He took the box into the cabin and over his mother’s protests slid the box of bones under his bed in the kitchen where he slept near the stove.
Neighbors kept wandering over to view the skeleton and hear the story of the flashing ruby ring. The work on the cellar became even slower.
“The neighbors wanted to “have a look” and marvel at the arrowheads in the bones,” Hendry wrote. “Old timers on the creek stared and tried to “remember back” to a time when Indians might have “done such a thing,” but most conceded that “that was all before my time.”
Alone With The Skeleton
The first evening after the skeleton had been uncovered, the Lichtys’ had to be away from the ranch. Frye was left alone to take care of the chores.
“That night as he slept, something caused him to stir and set up in bed,” Thronburg wrote. “Something was fluttering over his head! His eyes flew open. Ghosts!
“He blinked, then he made out his mother’s dish towels hanging across the wire over the stove where she always left them to dry after doing dishes. Yet the thought of the skeleton beneath his bed was a trifle too much for a fellow all alone in the still of the night.”
As the owls made their mournful call, Frye crept out of his bed and pulled the box of bones from their hiding spot. He carried the gruesome contents out into the night, crossing over the slippery rocks of Badwater Creek.
He scrambled up the other side of the bank and, clutching the box to himself, trudged toward the barn. He climbed awkwardly up the ladder into the hayloft and shoved the box with its grisly bones into the rafters. He hurried back to bed, glancing with a sheepish grin at the towels hanging over the stove.
The skeletons remained in the box, tucked away in the barn rafter on Badwater. Every so often, someone would ask to “have another look” and the Lichtys’ would bring it out.
According to Hendry, a doctor later identified the skeleton as female and of the white race.
The Haunted Cellar
The root cellar had been finally finished and Catherine Lichty set to work puitting it to order.
“One morning, in the gloom of her new root cellar, Catherine heard a soft sighing sound and then a moan,” wrote Thronburg. “It was just the wind in the cellar vent, she thought. She continued arranging the jars on the shelves. The sighing grew louder. She shrugged away a certain nervous feeling and went up to the cellar steps for another load of canned goods.
“In the bright morning sunlight, she realized that the wind was not blowing. She turned back to search the cellar with her flashlight thinking it was perhaps a wounded animal. There was no sound and no wounded animal. She stood there for a moment. The sighing began again, growing into a moan and then became distinct feminine sobbing.”
Her husband and son were gone and she was alone with the eerie wailing. Wanting a witness, Lichty ran to get the neighbor, an old man who lived above the choke cherry thicket. He had a reputation for not tolerating nonsense.
The two of them returned to the new root cellar and descended the cellar steps. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood quietly in the dark and waited.
Ghostly crying and soft moans soon pierced the darkness.
Lichty whispered hoarsely, “Do you hear that?”
“You bet I do! And I’m getting out of this dang-blasted place!” the old fellow responded, turning on his heel. He wasted no time in scaling the cellar steps despite his cane and age.
The crying and moans continued throughout the years, but the family never did determine the cause of the crying. Catherine Lichty refused to give up the use of her hard-won cellar and learned to live with the soft crying.
Perhaps, she later said, the ghost was mourning the loss of its arrow-ridden bones.
A few years later, the Lichtys moved away from Badwater. The root cellar has fallen back around the skeleton’s original resting place and, by the 1970s, it was no longer possible to enter.
The ghost has been left to mourn its lost arrow-ridden bones all alone.
Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
