Wyoming's Death Ship
A cursed ghost ship haunts the North Platte River every 25 years
Stories of ghost ships are found throughout modern folklore. These legends usually center on a ship and its passengers disappearing without a trace and later returning from beyond the grave to haunt the same body of water where they first vanished. Wyoming is home to a different variety of ghost ship legend that is much creepier.
The Death Ship of the Platte River details a legend of a ghostly vessel that reportedly appears every 25 years on the North Platte River in Wyoming where it is cursed to sail forever. The ship is said to be an omen of doom, foretelling a death on the same day when the ship is seen.
The Death Ship Arrives
Witnesses of the death ship report that it rises from a thick mist or rolling fog bank. As the ship draws closer, things take a horrifying turn. Sails, masts, and the deck are coated with a sparkling frost. The ship's crew stands on the deck also coated with the same frost. Crew members huddle around a corpse as the ship approaches.
The corpse’s identity is the most startling part of this legend. When the crew steps back from the body, it is always revealed to be a person known and loved by the witness or the witness themselves. This turns out to foreshadow the death of that person later that same day.
Famous sightings
Alleged sightings of the Death Ship of the Platte River were first reported in the 19th century. Each sighting occurred on an autumn day during the afternoon. Reports of these sightings were supposedly collected by an organization known as the Cheyenne Bureau of Psychological Research.
A trapper named Leon Webber claimed to have seen the ship in 1862. Webber reported it carried the body of his fiancée. When he returned home a month later, Webber learned his fiancée tragically died on the same day he saw the apparition.
Gene Wilson, a Wyoming cattleman, reported another sighting in 1887. Wilson witnessed the ship’s captain order a piece of frost covered canvas lowered to the deck. Laying on the canvas was his dead wife, her face burnt from a fire. He raced home only to find his house burned to the ground and his wife lying dead about 100 yards from the smoldering ashes.
A third sighting in 1903, from a homesteader named Victor Hiebe, reported gallows on the ship when it appeared while he chopped down a tree on his riverfront property. A man’s body swung from a noose on the gallows and Hiebe recognized it as his best friend who had been convicted of murder. The same friend reportedly escaped from prison earlier, but Hiebe soon learned he had been captured and executed on the same day the ship appeared.
Each account of a ghost ship carrying the body of a soon-to-be deceased person is heavily inspired by an ancient Greek myth detailing how Charon ferried souls of the dead across the river Styx surrounding the underworld.
Want to nominate folklore or an urban legend to explore in a future Folklore Friday feature? Comment below.
In Hell’s Shadow Goes Wide
Exciting news! My short story, In Hell's Shadow, is now available at major booksellers outside of Amazon. If you enjoy ghost stories and campfire tales, I highly recommend checking out In Hell’s Shadow today. You won’t be disappointed.
I originally published In Hell’s Shadow to Kindle Unlimited but pulled the story after three years. I accumulated less than 500 total page reads during that time, so keeping my story in KU no longer made sense. The successes of Hiding from Shadows and Hollow Planet — my other short stories — outside of KU made distributing all my stories wide an easy decision.
You can buy In Hell’s Shadow direct from my Samak Press store. It’s available in your choice of epub, mobi, or pdf format for 99 cents (USD). (Hiding from Shadows and Hollow Planet are also available direct from Samak Press in the same eBook formats).
A paperback edition is also available on Amazon. I’m also working on offering an audiobook version in the near future.
Ooh, I like this one. It has the kind of gothic romance all good ghost stories should have :-)
How about Sugisawa Village or the Ghost Bus of Highway 93 for an urban legend? Sugisawa supposedly was scrubbed from all maps in Japan and may or may not be haunted, and the ghost bus is said to deposit additional...'passengers' in your car on that highway.