Skeleton Creek as I'm sure you know is a fictional book. It's also a small clue for me because I'm working on a case. The case of JB with my BFF's Grace and Peace. So far I have found many stories about JB and they are all very helpfull.....to me. I'm a researcher....Grace makes videos..and Peace sketches. We have made progress in the past year and if you have anything you want to add about JB....Please send me pics, or videos!!
This comment was posted on Skeletoncreekisreal.com by a member named FIREFAIRY on May 30......
This is real. The dredge. Joe Bush. Sarah and Ryan. I’ve been to the dredge, and all of this checks in. All of it. Mostly. There is something that will watch, and follow, and eventually, try to kill you. If you are planning on going to the dredge, or Skeleton Creek, keep yourself from harm, and don’t go. Secrets not meant to be revealed, will come out, and you’ll wish you hadn’t seen the light of day again. If you go, and come back, it will be short. A slow and painful death awaits you. In loving memory of Tricia Vickers.
One Christmas Eve two men on watch reportedly heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The two men hid to give whoever was coming up the stairs a scare. When the footsteps finally reached the floor and continued across the room, the two men jumped out to find no one. Wet footprints from the melting snow should have been left on the wooden floor, yet there was nothing. Except the door was left wide open. The other crew members were accounted for in town celebrating the holiday with family and friends. Joe Bush was the only explanation. This was one of the first documented experiences beyond flickering lights and strange sounds. Bush has also made appearances in stories about a leg heard dragging along while workers were waiting for a member. All they found was his book of phantoms. Bush died on the dredge from getting his foot stuck in machinery.[2]
Another documented occurrence happened during the night shift a few years later. A splash was heard outside, followed by footsteps down the gangplank, toward the stern and then out the stacker. Workers followed the sounds. When they came to a dead end, one of the workers asked Bush to give him a sign that he was present. Upon saying "sign", the light bulb burned out.[2]
Many people assumed dredge workers were creating stories to entertain themselves on the lonely evenings. This theory was disproved recently by a Sumpter Valley Dredge State Park Ranger named Stephen Alford when he published a paper entitled "The Ghost of the Dredge", detailing his experiences with Bush while maintaining the non-operational dredge.
One afternoon the ranger and some of his crew were taunting the ghost by calling out his name while standing on the deck and peeking inside the dredge. On the last call out at the end of the shift, a large splash of water hit the door from the inside. The workers ran. After that the ghost of Bush would visit the ranger at his office, standing outside the window approximately 30 feet and then disappearing into the night when the ranger would follow him.[3]
Skeleton Creek, a book based on the events, was recently published.
The Legend of JB
On a warm fall day at the Sumpter dredge, sunlight filters through the windows and the silence offers a nice reprieve from the bustle of life. But after awhile the massive gears seem to loom, and the heavy pulleys and chains look a bit ominous. Suddenly the quietness presses upon your senses. "It was a spooky place," says Wes Dickison, 77, who worked on the dredge for 4 years in the late 1940s. It wasn't scary when it ran as it should, he says. This dredge, which dug up and processed gold in the Sumpter Valley until 1954, operated 24 hours a day. "Of course, it was lit up inside," Dickison says. But he well remembers those times, in the dark of night, when the power went out. The lights extinguished. The pumps stopped. There was silence. When that happened, the head oiler and the winch man lowered the gangplank and left to alert the Dredgemaster. Someone had to stay behind — usually the most junior employee. "For the stern oiler who got to stay there, it was a scary place," Dickison said. "He'd sit on the boat, get back in some corner, and stay there. "And wait for Joe Bush. "He was the ghost on the dredge," says Norm Hansen, 85, who worked on the dredge for about five months. "There were no lights, nothing. They just sat in the dark and waited for Joe Bush to come by." Norm's older brother, the late George Hansen, is credited with spreading the story of Joe Bush. "Anything that happened on the dredge, or something went wrong, it was Joe Bush," Hansen says. "It all started as a joke, and I'd blame George Hansen," Dickison says. But was Joe Bush only a story? "You wondered — when water starting running for no reason," Dickison says. "It was a spooky place in the middle of the night. "The legend of Joe Bush always resurfaces at the annual Dredge Workers Reunion held every June. "We all say it was haunted," Dickison says of the dredge. He and his five brothers all worked on the dredge at one time or another. For Hansen, a mention of Joe Bush elicits a chuckle. "(The dredge) never shut down, unless Joe Bush got into something. Maybe the idea of a ghost just gave substance to the strange noises in the dark. Maybe imaginations ran wild. Whatever the reason for Joe Bush, Dickison says the tall tales must not have been scary enough to keep workers away.
"I guess we weren't too scared. We stayed."