SHELF ROAD, CRIPPLE CREEK, COLORADO USA

by JC Fredlund, Author
(Lakeville, MN, USA)

There sits a tiny mining town high up in the Colorado mountains known as Cripple Creek. Just outside of Cripple Creek is a road known as Shelf Road. Back in the gold rush days, this trail was traveled by stage coach with countless folks trying to get to the mine in Cripple Creek where they were determined that they would strike-it-rich. My husband and I are history-buffs/adventurers and were incredibly excited to find this road. Many hundreds of people died traveling this trail as it is very steep and very treacherous. (We would not recommend that anyone try to drive this road unless you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle.)

Just as we'd driven a long way down Shelf Road, I could hear the laughter of two small children echoing over the rocks. I looked up the rocks - steep, vertical rocks that went straight-up at a ninety degree angle from the ground - enormous rocks that I could reach out our RAM truck window and touch (the road is so narrow). I could tell that the laughter was coming from just above us in some huge rocks sitting above the rock I could reach out and touch.

At first I thought that the laughter was echoing off the rocks. But then I realized that there is absolutely no one for miles and miles from where we were, and that what had struck me as echoing children's laughter, was actually a haunted-sounding laughter! (There was no way anyone could've gotten to the area above us without elaborate, and professional rock climbing equipment!

The experience touched me deeply as I could hear the pure, elated joy in the children's laughter yet realized that they had to have died there many years ago . . . back in the gold rush days.

Copyright 2014 by JC Cooke-Fredlund, Author