BOB MCCRACKEN Nye County History Advertisement

Halloween is a good time to talk about goblins, ghosts, and other fearsome entities.

More than 400 years' study of the peoples of the world has demonstrated the universal belief in the existence of what are called "ogres."

In 1955 Stith Thompson, an amazingly dedicated scholar, published a six-volume work on the literature of the peoples of the world titled "The Types of Folk-Tale: A Classification and Bibliography." In it, he attempted to classify the elements that make up the folk tales, myths, ballads, and fables recorded throughout the world.

These entities, of course, never existed in the real world.

Throughout the world, ogres serve an important social function. As a former professor of mine, John Greenway, said in his book on world folklore, "Fear is the universal emotion evoked by ogre tales and since fear is a powerful source of psychic energy, ogres are used to coerce people into proper conduct."

Two Native American groups occupied what is now Nye County at the time of the first entry of Euroamericans in 1827 -- the Shoshone, who resided in that part of Nye County north of Ash Meadows; and the Southern Paiute, who lived in the area from Ash Meadows south. Near neighbors included the Northern Paiute, who occupied western Nevada from about Mono Lake north, west of the Reese River; and the Panamint, who were found in the Owens Valley and a portion of southern Nevada.

All of these groups are speakers of Numic languages. Numic is a language family whose separate languages are fairly similar -- much like Spanish, French, and Italian, all members of the Romance language family. The Numic-speakers in Nye County, along with the Ute Indians (who also speak a Numic language), who occupied most of Utah east of the Virgin River and western Colorado to the Continental Divide, share many cultural traits in addition to the similarity of their languages. They tend to have the same ogres.

Storytelling was an important activity for the Numic people, as it is with all human beings. One researcher, Sven Liljeblad, described the Numic-speaking people's storytelling this way: "In the flickering light of the tiny fire in the center of the flimsy winter dwelling, people huddled in their rabbitskin blankets, listening to stories they had known since childhood but never tired of hearing again."

One of the most important ogres for people living in the Great Basin was "a water spirit of evil disposition, a creature still observed today by old and young."

The literal translation of the Shoshone name for this creature is Water Baby. Water Baby typically is a solitary spirit dwelling in streams, lakes, or springs and makes visits nightly to people's camps and steals babies left unguarded by their mothers; it also pulls people into rivers. Tales are even told of Water Babies dragging man-eating giants down into the water to be drowned.

Another ogre of the Numic-speaking people, including Nye County's Southern Paiute and Shoshone people, is a terrifying and harmful dwarf known as Mountain Man. He can also be translated as the bogeyman and used as a warning when disciplining children.

This entity leaves footprints as long as a person's finger and sometimes travels at timberline armed with a bow and arrow. Sometimes he shows himself as a pygmy less than five inches tall. He may be seen as a bright green miniature. He shoots invisible arrows from his quiver that can cause sickness in man and animals.

People were reluctant to utter his name.

There are also legends of man-eating ogres of superhuman size. The Shoshones envision such a supernatural being as a sort of ghost, sometimes depicted as a one-legged monster. Giants may appear with only one eye or with large, glowing eyes. The song a giant sings, or his whistling, can be heard from a distance. This giant, man-eating creature can paralyze people with a glance, and tales center around his abduction of people.

Experts suggest that in pre-European contact times, area residents told ogre stories more frequently than any other type of lore. It is important to remember that tales of ogres and other supernatural entities are always placed in the context of the local environment and social structure.

When people visualize such beings in their local situation, their local reality, the stories carry more meaning and emotional potency.

Miners in the American West had their own cast of supernatural characters. For example, belief in tommyknockers was common. A tommyknocker is a mischievous, sometimes malevolent, entity believed to dwell in mines. They are thought to be capable of interacting with miners in both helpful and frightening ways, sometimes in the same act.

When I got out of high school, I worked with my father in a mine in New Mexico. One of my tasks was to carry large bundles of fuse attached to blasting caps down a long, poorly lit tunnel. I did not enjoy doing this. On occasion, I thought I heard strange sounds emanating from the rock walls. I happened to mention these sounds to my father and he quizzed me closely on what exactly I had heard. I asked him why he was so interested and he answered, "Well, it could be tommyknockers and you've got to pay attention."

On a more frightening note, I have interviewed miners who, some 40 years ago, worked at the Wellington Mine in Breckenridge, Colo. Some of the workings at the Wellington date back to the early 1900s. The men I spoke to told of a ghost, an ogre who was believed to inhabit the old section of the mine. The entity was described as a headless miner who endlessly pushed a ghostly tram car full of ore through the old diggings.

Belief in the headless trammer among miners at the Wellington varied, but no one was completely dismissive. There were some who would go into the old section of the mine if they had to, but were never completely comfortable doing so. Other miners absolutely refused under any conditions to enter the old part of the mine out of fear of encountering the headless trammer.

Halloween is here -- watch out.