The sign on the highway says, welcome to Palouse.
Palouse seems like a very quiet little town, but there's a place called Chady Lane, and
it's called Chady for a reason.
Every year in October, hundreds of people come to Palouse to spend money to experience
the thrill of being scared by the undead and other scary things that really are not spiritual.
As a photographer, I seldom turn the camera on myself, so in my photographs, as in life,
I see myself most often as a shadow.
Some cultures believe that our shadows are our souls.
Many people in Palouse would like you to believe that it's a very innocuous village, even
a bit bucolic.
The main street has been transformed from nearly a ghost town to a spirited place with
plastic street lights that look a lot like 20th century lights, and curly benches that
invite people to sit, but who really sits long enough to watch the sap drip from a tree?
Most of the shadows I have encountered as I have wandered across the Palouse have been
the spirits of Native Americans.
For more than 10,000 years, they lived on the land and died here, then came the old world
invaders, and things changed.
Palouse began as a supply center for the Houdu mining district.
Around 1860, gold was discovered in the Houdu mountains that can be seen to the east of
the city of Palouse.
The gold brought a gang of outlaws into the area, their leader was Sheriff Henry Plummer,
who was eventually caught and hanged by a group of vigilantes.
But ever after that, the miners would leave their claims and gallop into towns as fast
as they could go.
In the 1870s, Chinese miners reworked the area.
Nearby outlaw miners poured poison into the water above the claim that the Chinese worked.
The strict nine killed the Chinese and left their spirits wandering across the land seeking
revenge.
This is why campers along strict nine creek often leave in the middle of the night.
Shedding lane is to the right where the patch of blue can be seen.
The bank is very steep, the body could easily be rolled down into the water where it could
flow away to the sea.
After the bartenders, the gamblers and the whores had all had their chance to relieve
the miners of their money, the marshland came along to make sure that the miners didn't
stay too long.
Every October hundreds of people come to see our haunted Palouse.
If they stay too long.
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