North Carolina Ghosts & Legends

Ghost of the Old Mine

Ghost ofthe Old Mine Gold Hill was once a flourishing boom town. And the tiny, peaceful community still remembers its violent past. Twilight is the hour to see a town ifyou would sense its true spirit. When evening falls in the tiny community of Gold Hill near Concord the present fades and shadows ofthe past begin to live again. The superstructures ofoldgold mine shaftsjutdarkly grotesque against the sky. An immense deserted mine office building crouches brooding beside the country road. At the village crossroads is a general store reminiscent ofthe early 1900s. Everything about this out-of-the-way place echoes the past. Itis a shell ofa once vibrantcommunity with its heart gutted out. The stuffthat once made the blood course lustily through the veins of this town was gold. Suppose by some accident oftime we should arrive in Gold Hill during the days when it teemed with life. How excitingly different the town looks to oureyes! Itis rowdy and bustling with the smell of smoke in the cold December air. Heavily bundled figures jostle each other along the muddy main street. Ghost ofthe Old Mine 107 Occasional boisterous peals of laughter come from The Nugget saloon and the murmur of soft Latin voices mingles with thick Cornish brogues. Gold Hill is booming in this year of 1842. It is bursting its shoddy seams with Jew and Gentile, Latinand Nordic, Cornishmen andNegro slaves. Rough, uneducated men are converging on it from every direction, drawn by their lust for gold. Among them Aaron Klein was a misfit. Son of a rabbi-almost too gentle for his own good-what did this young man have to do with the greed and anticipation swirling about him? Aaron himselfcouldn't have explained it. His parents had died several years earlier, back in Pennsylvania. Just twenty, this not quite boy, not yet man, had landed in Gold Hill. It was a week before Christmas and Aaron leaned against one of the store fronts watching a motley group stumble out of The Nugget. They might have passed him unnoticed ifit had not been for the sharp eyes of"Big Stan" Cukla. His tremendous physique made the nickname well earned. And no amount of whiskey seemed able to dull his amazing bodily coordination. For reasons ofhis own he had taken an intense dislike to Aaron. Some smiled slyly and said it was rivalry for the heart of a lovely blue-eyed Cornish girl named Elizabeth Moyle. Big Stan stopped abruptly when he saw Aaron standing in the shadows. "Have a drinklittleJew boy,"he called outtauntingly. Aaron made no reply. The big man's face reddened, the muscles ofhis short neck bulged, and the ugly little eyes, too small for the coarse features, glared in hatred. 108 Gold Hill Ghost of the Old Mine 109 One huge arm shot out and grasped the back of Aaron's neck. "We'll see whether you're too blasted good to drink with me," he roared. Holding a bottle in his free hand he tried to force the fiery liquid between Aaron's lips. The youth coughed, spluttered, and finally managed to free himself from the grip of his tormentor. He half stumbled, halfran toward the doorway ofa store behind him. "She doesn't want a sniveling, sick puppy. She wants a man!" were the last words Aaron heard as he reached the shop's door safely. But Big Stan Cukla was wrong. He often bragged that he knew the shafts of the mine as well as he knew his own little shack, but he did not know women. It could not have been more than a week later when word that Aaron and Elizabeth would marry on Christmas Eve spread among the log cabins, shacks, and covered wagons of Gold Hill. Every hour that Aaron labored in the depths of the Randolph mine he hated it more. But the odious work brought him nearer the day when he and his bride could go North and begin a new life together. As Christmas approached, young Aaron's happiness knew no bounds. Even the days in the mine's dark tunnels seemedto fly. Before, he would think ofthe black nothingness ofthe 850-foot shaft below as the skip would lower him down to his level. Now, he hardly thought of the water and darkness in the depths beneath his feet. The miners and their wives enjoyed joshing Aaron about his...