Creepy Cowboy Chronicles: Death ship haunts Platte River valley

In addition to shipping day and the fall gather, carved pumpkins and crunchy fallen leaves, the month of October is also marked by horror, haunts and all things spooky.

And, the state of Wyoming is no stranger to some eerie tales and legends. 

One legend is that of the Death Ship of the Platte River, a ghostly vessel and omen of doom which reportedly appears every 25 years and foretells death of a loved one on the same day the ship is seen. 

The Death Ship 

According to online sources, the legend insists a phantom ship ceaselessly sails the waters of a stretch of Platte River between Torrington and Alcova.

Witnesses report the ghostly ship rises from a thick blanket of mist or fog, with its billowing sails and eerie deck dusted in white frost. 

The crew, which is also said to be covered in frost, stands huddled on the deck surrounding a corpse lying on a canvas sheet.

“The corpse’s identity is the most startling part of this legend,” notes Strange New Worlds Author John Coon. “When the crew steps back from the body, it is always revealed to be a person known and loved by the witness or the witness themselves. This turns out to foreshadow the death of that person later the same day.”

Famous sightings 

The first alleged sighting of the Death Ship occurred in 1862 by a fur trapper known as Leon Weber. 

Weber claimed to have seen the body of his fiancé laying on the ship’s icy deck, and when he returned home a month later, he learned his fiancé had tragically died the day he saw the apparition. 

In 1887, Wyoming Cattleman Gene Wilson came face to face with the Death Ship. Wilson witnessed the ship’s captain order a piece of canvas lowered to the deck, and laying on the canvas was his dead wife, her face badly burned. 

Wilson raced home only to find his house had burned to the ground with his wife inside. 

A third sighting came in 1903, when Victor Hiebe reported seeing the ship sail past his riverfront homestead. Hiebe recognized his best friend swinging from a noose on the ship’s gallows.

The same friend had been convicted of murder and escaped from prison, but Heibe learned later he had been captured and executed the day he saw the ship. 

According to Legends of America, another sighting took place six miles southeast of Guernsey and one occurred on the Platte River’s Bessemer Bend. 

Hannah Bugas is the managing editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.