Gold Miner’s Ghost
GOLD MINER’S GHOST – April 18, 2025 – Clearlake, California, USA
When Mrs. Diaz split her class into reading groups, she could never have predicted the four boys sitting in the far corner of her classroom would get along so well. They did not look much alike and they each rode a different bus to get to Clearlake Middle School from distant parts of their rural county. When they were left alone to discuss a story from their reading book, they all had something to share. Their conversations eventually drifted away from the questions provided by Mrs. Diaz and toward personal interests.
Alonzo and Niles were dedicated video gamers. They loved sharing opinions about combat games and whether they were better or worse than other titles. Bryson and Leon were more into role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. While they never got together outside of school to imagine a quest, they could talk endlessly about the characters they developed with other friends.
At the intersections of all their interests was the dream of going on some real adventure. And like the conclusion of many of the video games or imagined Dungeons and Dragons quests, they wanted to get rich by uncovering a horde of gold. Their gold fever was helped along by where they lived. They had grown up listening to relatives talk about gold mining around Clearlake and how there was still nuggets to be found in the hills and riverbanks. Gold was surely out there for the taking if they had some idea where to look.
On an overcast day in March, the reading group had finished discussing a story about the underground railroad and had once again turned their attention to gold. Niles, who had yet to hit any growth spurts and still spoke with a squeak in his voice, casually mentioned a family secret.
“My grandpa owns land that used to have a gold mine.”
The other boys returned skeptical looks. Alonzo said, “Yeah, right. How come you’re just telling us now?”
Niles shrugged his skinny shoulders. “I dunno. I guess I just remembered.”
“Where is it?” Bryson asked.
“Next to the school.”
“What school?”
“This school. Past the football field and running track. Everything on the other side of the fence.”
“Have you ever seen the gold mine?” Alonzo asked.
“No. But I’ve never really looked.”
An excited grin spread over Bryson’s face as he said, “What if we walked out there and found it? And there was still gold left?”
Niles straightened up in his chair and said, “We could try.”
They immediately forgot everything else as they worked out the logistics for a gold hunt. It would need to happen during a school day since there was no way they could all arrange to meet there on a weekend. And doing it at lunch was out of the question because technically they were supposed to stay on school grounds once school got started and teachers were out patrolling. Right after school would not work, either, because they all had buses to catch. The only available window seemed to be in the morning after their buses dropped them off. They had almost twenty unsupervised minutes before school started.
“Okay, we’ll meet by the flagpole tomorrow,” Alonzo concluded in a conspiratorial whisper.
The next morning, Leon’s was the last bus to arrive. He sprinted toward his classmates and together they followed the school’s chain link fence until it reached the corner where the school’s property ended and Nile’s grandpa’s property began. A barbed wire fence blocked their way. A rusted sign hung from the wire which read, “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
“It’s not trespassing if your family owns it,” Alonzo said to Niles. “You give us permission, right?”
“Sure. It’s okay with me,” Niles replied matter-of-factly.
Everyone squeezed through the barbed wire and headed up a gentle hill covered in scraggly bushes. A grove of trees grew in the distance and beyond that rose a rocky peak that looked craggily enough to hold secret entrances to underground tunnels.
“That’s gotta be where the mine is,” Alonzo said. “But we gotta hurry to make it in time.”
Alonzo was easily the biggest of the four boys and at least a head taller than Niles. He lived on a ranch and always wore boots and jeans. The others naturally assumed he was tougher and stronger than they were. As he jogged toward the suspected mine, Niles struggled to keep pace. Bryson and Leon followed behind and worried silently about not getting back in time for first period classes.
The boys reached the top of the low hill in front of them and descended into a shallow ravine covered by large rocks and more thorny bushes. Along the ravine, they found spots where rocks had been collected into piles. Then they spotted slabs of flatter rocks and weathered wood with letters and numbers carved into their surfaces. Alonzo stopped jogging.
“Guys, do you know what these are? They’re graves.”
“Are you sure?” Bryson asked, stooping over to look closer at one of the crude headstones.
“I’ve seen something like this before at a ghost town,” Alonzo replied confidently.
The idea of reaching the mine was forgotten as they explored the lost graveyard and read aloud the names and dates that were still visible. From where they stood, their middle school lay completely hidden behind the first hill they had climbed. Bryson was the first to remind them they needed to get back to civilization and their first class. Alonzo led the way back to the wire fence and school property.
During English, the reading group completely ignored their discussion questions as they speculated about the graveyard.
“They had to be gold miners,” Alonzo insisted. “We didn’t see any families buried together. They were dudes out here finding gold.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Leon replied with an eager nod.
“And if they didn’t have families with them, that means they were buried with their gold,” Alonzo continued.
“They didn’t give it away?” Bryson asked.
“Nah. I’ll bet they made a pact with their friends to bury them with whatever they had. The easiest way for us to find gold is just digging up one of those graves.”
Bryson and Leon both leaned back in their chairs. Bryson slowly muttered, “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Don’t be scared,” Alonzo said with a sneer. “Listen, since Nile’s family owns the land, if he says it’s okay to dig around, then it’s okay. Niles, do you give us permission?”
The other boys turned to look at Niles. He struggled with the question for a few seconds before saying, “I guess so.”
“See, we’ve got permission. And let’s say we split up everything we find equally.”
The more Alonzo talked, the more convincing he sounded. By the end of class, everyone was eager to return to the treasure hunt the next morning.
The second trip to the graveyard was all about finding the grave with the most gold. Alonzo and Niles chaotically ran back and forth sounding out faded names and years on the markers. Bryson and Leon kept more to themselves. It was Leon who found the marker made from a smooth red stone that looked different from the others. The engraved letters were easy to read. Billy “Lucky Strike” Ransom. Leon shouted for the others to take a look.
“Lucky Strike means he found a lot of gold,” Alonzo concluded. “There’s gotta be piles of it right below us. This is the one.” Alonzo dropped to his knees and clawed at the ground with his fingers as a test. He scraped away a handful of dirt and gravel and said, “It won’t be easy, but we can do it.”
On the way back to school, Bryson brought up something bothering him. “Is anybody worried about ghosts and stuff? Don’t they start appearing when you disturb a grave?”
“If you’re scared, you don’t have to do it,” Alonzo answered in a gruff voice. “Leaves more gold for the rest of us.”
Bryson did not want to look weak or hesitant in front of the others so he quickly replied, “I’m not saying I believe in ghosts or anything. I’m just asking if anyone else does.”
No one wanted to talk about it. During English class, all their attention turned to guessing how much gold was in the ground. Given the size of a normal grave, there had to be room for sacks on top of sacks. Maybe a million dollars’ worth. With that much money, they could all buy nice cars and phones. They would have plenty left over for every kind of video game and every Dungeons and Dragons accessory ever made.
After getting off their buses the next day, the four boys ran directly to Luck Strike’s grave and scratched at the ground with their fingers. They did not get far. On their next trip, they brought digging supplies they could hide in their backpacks – gardening spades, metal bowls, and a claw hammer. The new tools were better than fingers, but grave robbing was still slow business. With only about 10 minutes’ worth of digging time available each school day, and a hole the size of a coffin to dig, they got about three inches deeper each session. Piles of dirt grew slowly all around the hole.
Almost from the start of the serious digging, Bryson began to have strange dreams. He was not surprised. The graveyard hole was easily the most exciting thing happening in his life and when he gave something a lot of thought, he would often have a dream about it. This new dream had small variations, but it always included the four boys from his reading group standing in the hole when suddenly someone else was there with them. The new person was not a kid like them. He had a beard and wore old-fashioned clothes including a broad brimmed hat. At some point in the dream, he reached into the ground, pulled out something, and shouted, “Gold! Gold! Six feet under!” Then he disappeared.
Even though the same dream kept coming to Bryson each night, he did not mention it to Alonzo, Niles, or Leon. And as the read hole grew deeper, the dream grew more vivid.
By the third week of digging, the hole was deep enough that in order to get more dirt out, only two of the boys would crawl down into the hole at a time. They scraped dirt into one of their digging bowls and passed it up to one of the boys waiting up top to dump it away from the grave. Bryson’s excitement over getting rich had faded. He thought constantly about what they might find. His strange dream returned multiple times each night and he woke up hearing the voice shouting about gold. But he was more afraid of being called chicken than he was of the graveyard, so he kept going back.
Bryson was not sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed like the other boys had also lost some enthusiasm. They ran to the grave slower than before. No one speculated about the money they would make. They hardly said anything. Instead of excitement, the mood around the dig site practically turned to dread.
On a Friday morning in April, the boys jogged solemnly to the hole. Steady wind blew in the smell of coming rain. The skies overhead churned with gray clouds. It was Leon’s and Nile’s turn to be down in the hole. Both seemed to stall before making the drop. Leon grabbed the claw hammer left below and swung at the ground to loosen the dirt. He swung twice more and hit something that did not sound like rock or soil. More like wood. Suddenly, a small dark crevice opened up and sucked in the dirt around it.
“Guys! We hit something!” Leon shouted. He and Niles scrambled up and out of the hole and all four boys stared down as more dirt fell into the crevice like sand in an hour glass.
“I think we hit the coffin, or whatever he was buried in,” Niles said with a stutter.
Bryson shivered. If they dug further, they would not find more than dirt. The remains of the miner’s body would be gruesome – something he would never be able to forget. In that instant, the wind picked up to almost a howl and Bryson was sure he heard someone shouting in the distance, “Gold! Six feet under!”
When Bryson looked around at the other three boys, the look of terror in their eyes confirmed they heard the voice too. A pee spot appeared in Alonzo’s jeans. Before Bryson could say, “Maybe we should put the dirt back,” everyone rushed at the piles and pushed. In a blur of limbs, they frantically used their entire bodies to move dirt any way possible. After thirty filthy minutes, three weeks’ worth of digging was practically erased. They sprinted back to school a mess and late for class. None of them said a word about graves or gold in English class that day. They barely looked at each other.
Later that night, Bryson stayed awake as long as possible. He was afraid to fall asleep and relive his recurring dream. When exhaustion finally overtook his body, he did not dream at all. He woke on Saturday morning feeling like the night passed instantly.
It took another week before anyone in the reading group brought up what happened. Bryson asked the others, “Did any of you have weird dreams?”
They each described the same thing. A man with a beard digging in the hole. Niles talked about the buttons on the man’s shirt and they all knew they had seen and heard the same thing.
“I guess he’s gone now,” Leon concluded. “At peace again or whatever.”
“You gonna tell your grandpa about it?” Bryson asked Niles. “Maybe go back there again?”
Niles thought for a minute before saying, “I dunno. But what if the miner was trying to tell us something? Maybe there’s a spot where he knows gold is buried. Somewhere else in the graveyard.”
Alonzo raised his hands to cut him off and said in an unusually harsh voice, “You can have it. Leave me out of this.”
From then on, the closest they got to talking about gold was when it had something to do with a reward in a video game.
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