Source: Atlas Obscura
OasisFrancesca Berrini/Lindsey Rickert
You’d be hard-pressed to find a community in Nevada that doesn’t possess a local legend or two.
This is especially true of the state’s many ghost towns, nearly all of which are said to be haunted by former residents. With Goldfield, Tonopah, and Fish Lake Valley on the itinerary for days three and four of their journey from Las Vegas to Reno on “The Fellowship of Highway 95”—a week-long artistic collaboration on Nevada’s “Free-Range Art Highway”, organized by Atlas Obscura and TravelNevada—the collage artist Francesca Berrini and the photographer Lindsey Rickert were heading deep into “ghost country,” as Berinni described it in the day’s travel journal.En route to Goldfield, the first stop was the International Car Forest of the Last Church. Covered in a thin blanket of snow, the sight was both serene and spooky. Rickert snapped an off-kilter photograph and collected a handful of snow from the ground. Later processing the film with this water, she produced an image that captures the eerie essence of the place. How many times have ghost-hunters presented photographs with similar imperfections as photographic “proof” of a ghostly presence?
“I’ve always thought believing in ghosts is something I’d like to take up, like wearing lots of crystal jewelry or keeping a dream journal to predict the future, but somehow my inner skeptic always undermines my excitement of unexplained phenomena,” Berinni wrote.
Goldfield’s unique history provides plenty of fodder for stories. Wyatt and Virgil Earp lived here for a year in the early 1900s, until the latter brother died of pneumonia. In 1907, the town’s mine owners convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to send in 300 federal troops to help manage a bitter labor dispute. And in 1923, the explosion of a moonshine distillery destroyed most of the town’s wooden structures.
For Berrini and Rickert, a pleasant chat with the owner of a local antique shop soon…
The post Finding a Muse in the Supernatural appeared first on FeedBox.