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My column generally deals with historical figures, places and events. However, it has come to my attention that a rather compelling story is centered around Niles Canyon, which intrigued me.
Is it a ghost story? I suppose it could fall into that category, so here goes….
There are various accounts of this tale, which include the “Legend of the White Witch.” For this effort, we’ll simply call it the “Ghost of Niles Canyon.”
Something else of note is that each account has the event taking place on Feb. 28 in the late 1920s or early 30s.
It seems a woman named Mary was returning from a social gathering in Sunol. Her boyfriend accompanied her. They were traveling on Niles Canyon Road near the train bridge. It was late at night, and it was raining heavily. The winding road was quite dark.
The car got into an accident, which killed her boyfriend. Some say the woman was on horseback. In either case, here’s where the story gets rather macabre.
Mary was killed as well, or was she?
Another vehicle driven by a woman came upon Mary standing by the side of the road, trying to flag down passersby.
The driver pulled over, and Mary asked to be taken to San Francisco. The driver agreed, and they set out to the City by the Bay. However, not long after, and well before approaching San Francisco, Mary simply vanished into thin air.
Over the years, psychics have made several attempts to contact Mary without success. At one point, an investigative reporter brought a thermal camera to the site.
The reporter claimed to have heard footsteps nearby and turned her camera toward the sound. At that point, she claims to have seen an image of a female figure that appeared to be walking next to her.
Others have also claimed to traverse the same area and report hearing footsteps.
Some have claimed the footsteps were simultaneous to their own; however, when they stopped, the sound of the footsteps stopped as well.
Local prognosticators suggest the appearance of Mary is an annual event that coincides with the date of Feb. 28.
If you are adventurous and are on Niles Canyon Road on Feb. 28, this year or any year, you may consider looking around. If Mary surfaces, she may still need a ride to San Francisco!
Everything else is just history…
Many young (and not so young) men have portrayed the Ghost. Here’s the story of one from at 2007 article in the Tracy Press. [If you are interested true Niles Canyon thriller, check out the 1927 account of the giant tarantula.]
Over in Niles Canyon, where my family comes from, there’s a legend of a ghost girl who walks the canyon road every Feb. 28 looking to hitch a ride into San Francisco.
The story that shows up in the Tri-Valley Herald every few years credits Billy Rose, a close friend of our family’s who had an actual encounter with the ghost. Apparently, more than a few years ago, Billy and a friend, not knowing the legend, saw a girl in white trying to hitch a ride. According to their story, they let her in and she insisted in riding in the back seat, giving them the directions to an address in San Francisco. Along the way, the girl was very quiet and resists Billy’s and his companion’s attempts to draw her into small talk. When they reached the Dumbarton Bridge, they handed the tollkeeper 15 cents, the toll being five cents for each passenger. When the tollkeeper handed a nickel back to Billy, he turns to point to the passenger in the back only to find the back seat empty. Curious, Billy and his friend drive on to the address in San Francisco. When they knock on the door, the woman who answers tells them, “That was my daughter. She was on her way back from a dance 20 years ago when her car ran off the road in Niles Canyon.”
A few years ago, I wrote a column about another appearance of the ghost girl that I tell to my first-graders about. This one is some people who drove into Sunol claiming they had seen the ghost girl walking across the bridge trestle. The sheriff went to investigate and when he arrived, he too, was spooked by seeing the ghost girl walking back and forth across the bridge. After telling the ghost to come down, he fired two warning shots in the air. At that point, the “ghost girl” dropped on the tracks, calling out, “Don’t shoot me, I’m coming down!” [As reported elsewhere, the “ghost” was actually some teenage boys dressed in white sheets.]
While I’ve never told a class the hitchhiking ghost girl account, I’ve always delighted in telling students that I know for a fact that this second story really happened and the people in Sunol really, really thought they saw a really real ghost, and that I know the story’s true because the ghost girl was my Uncle Clarence.
His name was William Clarence Chivers, and he was my uncle. An obituary in the Press listed his name as Bill. Aside from his adventurous youth, playing the ghost girl and driving with Joey Chitwood’s Hell-Drivers (think Evel Knievel in Buicks), he led what many would consider to be an unremarkable life.