Ghosts share Carson's spooky history

A dozen people listened Saturday to the tale of how the shadow of former Nevada Gov. John Jones sometimes appears at 603 E. Robinson St., looking for the apple tree that used to grow by his old home.

Suddenly, a figure jumped out from behind a tree with a loud "Boo!" and several members of the group jumped a bit themselves.

It wasn't Jones' ghost, though, but the spirit of Mark Twain trying to put the fright on the small audience.

"Well, it wouldn't have been a ghost walk if you hadn't have been spooked," Twain said by way of small apology. Twain's ghost was being played by Mike Roberts, a Reno man who has portrayed Twain as a young man on the Comstock and in Carson City in performances for about two years.

Carson's historic west side was the scene of many such recreated hauntings during the Ghost Walk, an annual event that mingles the community's historic past with accumulated tales of apparitions and paranormal events in homes and businesses that often date back more than a century.

The story of Gov. Jones' ghost was told by Teresa Dyer, who portrayed the governor's wife, Elizabeth Weyborn, as she sat on the porch of the Cormack-Jones house.

Dyer's real husband, Tim, portrayed Jones, who serve as governor from 1895 until his death April 10, 1896. Though Jones had the shortest incumbency of any elected governor in Nevada, he previously had been elected to two four-year terms as Nevada's surveyor general.

At the Brewery Arts Center, the Nevada Gunfighters reenactment group had transformed part of the gift shop into a 1870s saloon. Around a felt-covered table, characters of uncertain reputation and honesty played games of chance, with six-shooters hanging ready at their sides.

Meanwhile, Marshal Ringo Garnet, portrayed by Bruce Royce, of Minden, told a few horror stories appropriate to the era, such as the story of Hardtack, the old prospector who was found frozen to death one frigid winter, still sitting upright.

The miners who found him began hauling Hardtack back to town, seated in the back of a wagon since he was too stiff to stretch out flat. The miners made a stop at a saloon on the way in to warm their own bones, and a prankster slipped out to take Hardtack's place in the wagon. As the miners set out again, one offered the other a nip from a bottle. When they heard "Hardtack" ask for one himself, they were so spooked they leapt from the moving wagon and walked back to town to find the wagon waiting at another saloon and the story of the prank already known to those inside.

Most of the ghosts were placed at a dozen historic homes and buildings, but Twain and Kit Carson, played by Dick Clark, were wandering souls, capturing of the attention of the "Ghost Walkers" wherever the spirit took them.

Saturday's was the eighth Ghost Walk, a annual October project of the Carson City Convention and Visitor's Bureau and the Carson City Redevelopment Authority.

The portrayals of apparitions and the descriptions of historical events by volunteer docents are supported by a number of organizations, businesses and individuals.