Haunted Wyoming: Lost Hunter Saved By Ghost Boy In Bighorn Mountains

In 1951, a hunting trip in Wyoming’s backcountry took a dire turn for a teenage hunter when he became lost in a thick fog. He believes that he would have come to a tragic end except for a supernatural intervention that to this day he cannot explain.

The hunter had told his story to Debra D. Munn, author of “Wyoming Ghost Stories,” but asked to remain anonymous. He had kept his story secret for more than 35 years and still had no answer for what had happened to him all those years ago.

He just knows that it is real and not a tall tale despite what naysayers may claim.

It was fall 73 years ago and the 17-year-old was hunting elk with his father and a small group of men. They had left their camp on a cold, cloudy dawn to hunt in the timber of North Trapper Creek in the Bighorn Mountains. They could see their breath as they plunged deeper into the woods, rifles in hand.

The tall pines towered above them as they hiked, the crunch of their boots the only sound in the desolate country. The rugged cliffs, spires and massive rock outcrops emphasized the rugged isolation of the landscape. The clear, cascading Trappers Creek ran through the canyon, its waters glimmering in the cool, crisp air.

By midmorning, the hunters ran into a herd of elk and each one was successful in bringing down their prey. For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, the men cleaned and tagged their game. Afterwards, they rested and talked among themselves, enjoying the solitude of the Bighorns.

According to Munn, as they chatted, the weather turned colder and a heavy fog began to settle in. In was midafternoon when, as the youngest in the party, the 17-year-old was chosen to walk back to their camp to bring back the pickup truck.

He knew the area well and his father was confident in his abilities to find the camp which was two to three miles away, across two canyons and the North Trapper Creek. However, the teenager hadn’t gotten far when the fog became even thicker.

‘I Knew Right Then That Things Weren’t Right’

The white mist rolled in all around him, nearly obscuring his view completely. He lost his bearings and did not know if had crossed one or both of the small canyons. Rather than head back, he forged on ahead. His path became steeper and rougher.

“I knew then that things weren’t right,” the hunter later told Munn. “The fog by that time was so thick that I couldn’t make out any familiar landmarks. I considered staying put, building a large fire and waiting it out, the way I had been taught. But for some reason, I kept going. I was getting very tired and a little panicky when I suddenly looked up into a clearing.

“There was a faint image of a boy standing there. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and pointing in the direction opposite to where I was headed. I hollered at him, but before he could say or do anything else, the fog moved into the clearing and he disappeared.

“Still not knowing where I was, I began walking in the direction he had pointed, and I soon came to a road. I followed it and walked right into our camp.”

Stunned, but relieved, the young hunter waited in camp until the fog lifted. He then drove the pickup back to where his dad and the others were waiting.

“I asked if anyone had seen a young kid with a red flannel shirt, but everyone said no,” he said.

They loaded up the game and drove back to camp. By then, it was dark and they hung their elk in the trees.

He Helped Another Hunter

The teenager could not stop thinking about what he had seen and was convinced that it had not been a real person standing there.

The next day, still bothered about what he had seen, he left his group and drove over to a nearby hunting camp to ask if anyone there had gotten lost in the fog.

One of the men had.

He said he had begun to lose his sense of direction when suddenly he saw a boy in a red flannel shirt.

This boy motioned urgently for the hunter to stay where he was. Taking heed, the man built a fire on a ridge and stayed there all night.

When he started back to camp the next morning, he discovered that if he had kept moving in the thick fog, he would have walked right off a very steep ledge.

“He told me that there had been something strange about that boy, and as tired as he was from the day’s ordeal, he hadn’t been able to sleep,” the hunter said. “I didn’t tell him that I had stayed awake the night before for the same reason.”

And A Sheepherder

That wasn’t the end of the story.

Later, an old Basque sheepherder in Greybull told a strange tale to the astonished teenager. He said that only the year before, he had encountered the apparition of a boy who gotten lost and died on Trapper Creek.

The 17-year-old did not tell the sheepherder his own story, but believed the sheepherder had seen the same apparition.

In the past, he would have regarded it as a tall tale but now, he said he knew better. That boy in the red flannel shirt had been real and had saved his life.

He told Munn, “Being as young and scared as I was, however, I kept this story bottled up inside me for more than 35 years, until now. I’ve been hunting and fishing in the Trapper Creek area many times since 1951, but I’ve never seen any more apparitions and I don’t know if anyone besides the elk hunter or the sheepherder has either.”

To add to the mystery of this tale, the Basque sheepherder had told the young hunter a true story. A boy had indeed become lost and died on Trapper Creek. It had happened only 19 years before.

On Sunday, Oct. 30, 1932, the Casper Star-Tribune wrote about the tragedy.

Dillon McKinnon was a 17-year-old Greybull youth who was one of three big game hunters lost in the Bighorn Mountains in late October. A severe snowstorm had swept that district and afterward, searchers scoured the area for the young man, risking their own lives as the storm worsened.

McKinnon had been last seen on a Monday at noon not far from the Shell ranger station between Greybull and Sheridan. He had shot an elk and was enroute alone to bring it in.

A party of 14 men from Greybull took up the search but returned when a dense fog descended on the mountains accompanied by severe cold weather. The teen’s parents were hanging desperately to the hope that their son had found refuge in an out-of-the-way cabin.

Two weeks later, the searchers from Casper had success. They waded through snow 3 feet deep in the bleak crest of the big game country and deep into the woods. They had given up hope of finding McKinnon when they found his body buried under a half foot of snow.

The editors of the Jackson’s Hole Courier wrote that the “resourceful and true son of the mountains, McKinnon had tramped more than 15 miles from his camp in search of shelter from sub-zero weather and swirling snows, only to fall into an exhausted sleep from which he never awakened.

“When found at the head of Trapper Creek, at an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet, McKinnon was resting on a bed of pine boughs. Beside him was his rifle and his boots and stockings. Seemingly, they said, the youth in utter exhaustion, yielded to the necessity of rest.”

Was the apparition in the red flannel shirt that saved the hunter in 1951 Dillion McKinnon?

If so, 17-year-old McKinnon had saved his fellow hunters from suffering his own fate at Trappers Creek nearly 20 years after his own death.

This mystery may never be solved, but for the three men who saw the boy in the red flannel shirt, they know that he was very real and saved their lives more than 70 years ago.

Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com

Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.