The Legend of the Ghost in Red Flannel

 A young Wyoming hunter became lost on Trapper Creek in the Bighorn Mountains in 1951. Just when things took a turn for the worse, a figure in a red flannel shirt appeared out of the thick fog to guide him back to camp before he mysteriously disappeared.

 Historical newspaper accounts from 1932 may contain the answer to this mystery.

 In 1951, a hunting trip in Wyoming’s backcountry took a dire turn for a teenage hunter when he became lost in a thick fog. He believes that he would have come to a tragic end except for a supernatural intervention that to this day, he cannot explain. 

 The hunter had told his story to Debra D. Munn, author of “Wyoming Ghost Stories” but asked to remain anonymous. He had kept his story secret decades and still had no answer for what had happened to him all those years ago. He just knew that it was real and not a tall tale despite what naysayers may try to say to the contrary. 

 It was fall over 70 years ago and the seventeen-year-old was hunting elk with his father and a small group of men. They had left their camp on a cold, cloudy dawn to hunt in the timber of North Trapper Creek in the Bighorn Mountains. They could see their breath as they plunged deeper into the woods, rifles in hand. 

 The tall pines towered above them as they hiked, the crunch of their boots the only sound in the desolate country. The rugged cliffs, spires, and massive rock outcrops emphasized the rugged isolation of the landscape. The clear, cascading Trappers Creek ran through the canyon, its waters glimmering in the cool, crisp air. 

 By midmorning, the hunters ran into a herd of elk and each one was successful in bringing down their prey. For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon, the men cleaned and tagged their game. Afterwards, they rested and talked among themselves, enjoying the solitude of the Bighorns. 

 As they chatted, the weather turned colder, and a heavy fog began to settle in. In was midafternoon when, as the youngest in the party, the seventeen-year-old was chosen to walk back to their camp to bring back the pickup truck. 

 He knew the area well and his father was confident in his abilities to find the camp which was two to three miles distant, across two canyons and the North Trapper Creek. However, the teenager hadn’t gotten far when the fog became even thicker. 

 The white mist rolled in all around him, nearly obscuring his view completely. He lost his bearings and did not know if had crossed one or both of the small canyons. Rather than head back, he forged on ahead. His path became steeper and rougher.

 He knew then that things weren’t right. The fog by that time was so thick that he couldn’t make out any familiar landmarks. He considered staying put, building a large fire, and waiting it out, the way he had been taught. But for some reason, he kept going. He was getting very tired and a little panicky when suddenly, he looked up into a clearing.

 There was a faint image of a young boy standing there. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and pointing in the direction opposite to where the teenager was headed. He hollered at the other boy, but before he could say or do anything else, the fog moved into the clearing and the figure in the flannel shirt disappeared. 

 Still not knowing where he was, the teenager began walking in the direction the other boy had pointed. Soon, he came to a road. The young hunter followed it and walked right into his camp.

 Stunned, but relieved, the teenager waited in camp until the fog lifted. He then drove the pickup back to where his dad and the others were waiting. 

 He asked if anyone had seen a young kid with a red flannel shirt, but everyone said no.

They loaded up the game and drove back to camp. By then, it was dark and they hung their elk in the trees. The teenager could not stop thinking about what he had seen and was convinced that it had not been a real person standing there. 

 The next day, still bothered about what he had seen, he left his group and drove over to a nearby hunting camp to ask if anyone there had gotten lost in the fog.

 Surprisingly, one of the men had also gotten lost in the thick fog. He said he had begun to lose his sense of direction when suddenly he saw a boy in a red flannel shirt. 

 This boy motioned urgently for the hunter to stay where he was. Taking heed, the man built a fire on a ridge and stayed there all night. When he started back to camp the next morning, he discovered that if he had kept moving in the thick fog, he would have walked right off a very steep ledge.

 The older hunter told the teenager that there had been something strange about that boy in the flannel shirt, and as tired as he was from the day’s ordeal, he hadn’t been able to sleep. The teenager didn’t tell him that he had also stayed awake the night before for the same reason.

 That wasn’t the end of the teenager’s story.

 Later, an old Basque sheep herder in Greybull told a strange tale to the astonished young hunter. He said that only the year before, he had also encountered the apparition of a boy in a red flannel shirt who gotten lost and died on Trapper Creek. 

 The seventeen-year-old did not tell the sheep herder his own story but believed the sheep herder had seen the same apparition. In the past, he would have regarded it as a tall tale but now, he said he knew better. That boy in the red flannel shirt had been real and had saved his life. 

 He kept the story secret he said because he was young and scared. He didn’t think anyone would believe him but finally shared the story nearly four decades later. 

 “I’ve been hunting and fishing in the Trapper Creek area many times since 1951, but I’ve never seen any more apparitions and I don’t know if anyone besides the elk hunter or the sheep herder has, either.”

 To add to the mystery of this tale, the Basque sheep herder told the truth. A boy had gotten lost and died on Trapper Creek. It had happened only nineteen years before.

 On Sunday, October 30, 1932, the Casper Star-Tribune wrote about the tragedy.

 Dillon McKinnon was a 17-year-old Greybull youth who was one of three big game hunters lost in the Big Horn mountains in late October. A severe snowstorm had swept that district and afterwards, searchers scoured the area for the young man, risking their own lives as the storm worsened. 

 Dillon had last been seen Monday at noon not far from the Shell ranger station between Greybull and Sheridan. He had shot an elk and was enroute alone to bring it in.

 A party of 14 men from Greybull took up the search but returned when a dense fog descended on the mountains accompanied by severe cold weather. Dillon’s parents were hanging desperately to the hope that their son had found refuge in an out-of-the-way cabin. 

Two weeks later, the searchers from Casper had success. They waded through snow three feet deep in the bleak crest of the big game country and deep into the woods. They had given up hope of finding the teenager when they found Dillon’s body buried under a half foot of snow.  

 The editors of the Jackson’s Hole Courier wrote that the “resourceful and a true son of the mountains, McKinnon had tramped more than 15 miles from his camp in search of shelter from sub-zero weather and swirling snows, only to fall into an exhausted sleep from which he never awakened.

 “When found at the head of Trapper Creek, at an elevation of nearly 8,000 feet, McKinnon was resting on a bed of pine boughs. Beside him was his rifle and his boots and stockings. Seemingly, they said, the youth in utter exhaustion, yielded to the necessity of rest.”  

 Was this boy in the red flannel shirt that saved the hunter in 1951 Dillion McKinnon? 

 If so, seventeen-year-old McKinnon had saved his fellow hunters from suffering his own fate at Trappers Creek nearly 20 years after his own death.  

 This mystery may never be solved but for the three men who saw the boy in the red flannel shirt, they know that he was very real and saved their lives over 70 years ago.