Miami Ghost Chronicles
  • Miami Ghost Chronicles
    • Contact and Support
  • MP Pellicer | Author
  • Eerie News
  • Stranger Than Fiction Blog
  • Paranormal Chit Chat
  • Stories of the Supernatural
    • SOS Season 13 Jan to June 2023
    • SOS Season 12 July - Dec 2022
    • SOS Season 11 Jan - June 2022
    • SOS Season 10 July - Dec 2021
    • SOS Season 9 Jan - June 2021
    • SOS Season 8 July - Dec 2020 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S8
    • SOS Season 7 Jan - June 2020 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S7
    • SOS Season 6 July - Dec 2019 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S6
    • SOS Season 5 Jan - June 2019 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S5
    • SOS Season 4 July - Dec 2018 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S4
    • SOS Season 3 Jan - June 2018 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S3
    • SOS Season 2 July to Dec. 2017 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S2
    • SOS Season 1 Feb - June 2017 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S1
  • Case Files & Investigations
    • Apparitions at the Asylum >
      • Rolling Hills Asylum
      • Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
    • Cemeteries >
      • Pinewood Cemetery
    • Haunted Hotels >
      • Brookdale Lodge
    • Haunted Holy Places >
      • Convent at Chacachacare Island
      • The Legend of St. Ann's Retreat
    • Haunted Prisons >
      • West Virginia Penitentiary
    • Historical Haunts >
      • Bobby Mackey's Music World
      • Drayton Hall Plantation
      • The Myrtles Plantation
    • Paranormal Cases >
      • Cases 2014
      • Cases 2015
      • Investigations I
      • Investigations II
      • Investigations III
      • Investigations IV
      • Investigations V
      • Investigations VI
      • Investigations VII
    • Animal Hauntings
    • Florida Haunted History >
      • Abandoned, Forgotten & Haunted
      • Belleview Biltmore Hotel
      • Biltmore Hotel
      • Coral Castle
      • Jonathan Dickinson State Park
      • The Devil Tree
      • Stranahan House
    • Murder Houses >
      • Kreischer Mansion




The Legend of the Ice Man of Mount Begbie

5/5/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
In 1940, an expedition was proposed to clear up the 75 year old mystery story that told of the frozen body of a climber encased inside an icy tomb on the slopes of Mount Begbie, British Columbia.

PictureRevelstoke Train Station c.1915
Rosamond Stenhouse Stewart (1924-1922), related a story told to her by her father Thomas Livingstone Haig (b.1866), who in the 1890s had been a magistrate in the town of Revelstoke (known in earlier years as Farwell and Second Crossing), in British Columbia. He described where he had been taken by an Indian fur trapper to see the body of a completely preserved man encased within the ice. The increasing thickness was making it difficult to make out details.

There was little written information to substantiate the story except reports from the town of Revelstoke during the 1890s.

Newspaper reports described one version in which a French Canadian fur trader or a Salish Indian, who acted as an advance scout for the Canadian Pacific Railway which built through the area in the 1880s fell into the crevasse. The glacier on Mount Begbie lies approximately 7 miles southwest of Revelstoke. It's on the northeast slop that rises almost 9,000 feet in altitude.

Could this have been a hunter or a prospector, which would justify why he climbed up the dangerous glacier?

The first known ascent was accomplished in 1907, though it's probable there were earlier ascents of Mount Begbie.

The story of the Iceman resurfaced with the opening of the Big  Bend highway in 1940. Newspapers wrote that the Revelstoke Board of Trade was possibly planning an expedition to find the iceman.

Supposedly many mountaineers vowed they had seen the frozen body, and others claimed it was just a tall tale.

PictureRevelstoke Post Card c.early 1900s
He was described as a man with a powerful build, with black hair receding from a bald spot, and a beard that almost reached his waist. He was wearing a woolen hunters' coat that came to his knees, and an old flintlock rifle lay across his shoulders.

One legend says the man was a French-Canadian prospector, one of three who worked in the area in the 1860s. This report is similar to other stories floated as to the identity of the man trapped in the ice.

According to local historians the story was told by the late J.C. Montgomery, a British Columbia pioneer who at one time was a crew member of the vessel Forty-Nine, bringing gold miners to the Big Bend gold fields. He said the story of the iceman was told by the local natives.

Skeptics pointed out it would too dangerous for anyone, including an Indian to scale the glacier to the top. Early settlers and miners thought of mountain climbing as a waste of time. 


PictureRevelstoke Winter c.1915
​In 2007, to mark the anniversary of the first recorded climb, a re-enactment was undertaken. They came to the base of the mountain by boat, then encountered heavy snow the same as the original party. Plans to bury a time capsule at the base of the glacier were ruined by the bad weather, however the capsule was buried at a later date.

So is the story of the Iceman of Mount Begbie just a legend, or was there a man trapped in the ice who for some unknown reason scaled the side of the glacier? Could this be a man that fell into the crevasse since prehistoric times like the famous Ötzi, discovered in 1991, who was possibly fleeing from pursuers? Ötzi was believed to have lived between 3350 and 3105 B.C.  His mummified remains were discovered by tourists at an elevation of 10,530 in the Ötztal Alps.

Perhaps one day the glacier at Mount Begbie will give up her dead.

PictureMount Begbie and the City of Revelstoke, c.1940s.
However the story of the Iceman is not the only unusual event to occur around Mount Begbie. Strange lights and weird experiences abound  as reported here.

Jan Hartley was just a teenager when she saw her one and only occurrence of unusual lights in the sky.  It was close to midnight on a New Year’s Eve in the late 1970s and Hartley was walking away from her home on 2nd street.
“I was by myself, going down to [a friend’s] house to meet them outside,” Hartley remembers. “And… I saw a light go over Mount Begbie.” According to Hartley, the light, which originated in the south before breaking west over the mountain, had no definable shape or color. “It was…a bright light – wasn’t moving very fast but wasn’t blinking either,” she says.  “I just remember staring at it and going, ‘That is a really weird light.’  It was only a few seconds then it was gone.”

___________________________________________________

​Standing in the backyard of his daughter’s home, situated in the 800 block of Second Street West, Carol Thompson’s father Harry Hartley was the first of the family to see something strange in the shadow of Mount Begbie.
“It was a sunny day in the summer time, sometime in the late 1970s” remembers Carol.  “I’d say it happened around noon or one o clock, because my parents were over for lunch.”
“My dad was leaning on the fence facing the river,” she goes on to say.  “My husband Ken and I were in lawn chairs facing him.  All of a sudden dad says, ‘Look at that!’”
Following Hartley’s gaze the family observed, across the Columbia River below Begbie’s triple-peak, what appeared to be sunshine gleaming off metal.
The object was not visible in a traditional sense – the Thompson family could not see exactly what was catching the sun; only an outline of the mysterious object was visible.  In fact, Thompson believes what she saw was only a portion of the thing’s true size, a piece roughly ten feet in length.
“I don’t think it was the whole picture,” she remembers.  “Just a glimpse.  I can’t help thinking something caught the sun that wasn’t supposed to.  A ten foot long section of something curved and going so fast…like a bullet.  It went up along the river and past Mount Begbie School.  It didn’t make a sound.  Then it disappeared.”
To date Thompson has never seen the object, or anything like it, again.

________________________________________________________

​One winter night in 2004, Alan Grace and Christine Helm were on their way home to the house they shared on Highway 1 when both saw what they described as “a trail of blue sparks” traveling east to west across the night sky.  Grace remembers, “They were bright, neon blue and passed over our car before disappearing behind Mount Begbie. It was hovering there... it was big."
Another report of unusual activity over Mount Begbie comes from Mark Ronson, a heavy-duty mechanic and amateur astronomer who knows his way around the night sky.
“In my first years [after taking up astronomy] I was out every night when it was clear. I got to know the sky, all the stars, the constellations and all the movements,” he says.  “It was so neat…not many people know that’s Jupiter, that’s Sirius, and so on – they think it’s bright lights in the sky and I wanted to go further.”
On a spring afternoon sometime in the 1990s, Ronson would see more than he imagined.
“I was walking my dog down in the industrial park…by the motocross track.  The sun was going down and I happened to glance up right above the ridge of Mount Begbie,” he remembers.  “I saw an object there. I put the binoculars on it and saw it was a brown rectangular shape.  It was hovering there…it was big…and then all of a sudden it took off and vanished in a point of light, heading west.”
Unsure of what he had seen, the first thing Ronson did was to rule out conventional explanations.
“It could have been the Hubble — that’s why I went home and checked,” he says.  “But the Hubble wasn’t in the sky that day, and neither was the Spacelab.”
Even if they had been present, Ronson has a hard time believing either object would be capable of moving at the speed of the object he had seen.
“That thing took off and it was gone — I saw it go from rectangular to a point of light within a second.”

​

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Eerie News | Stories of the Mysterious and Unexplained

    M.P. Pellicer

    ​For all the latest news articles and stories about the world of the paranormal and the unexplained.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Donate via Buy Me a Coffee
    Get new posts by email:
    Powered by follow.it
    Tweets by EerieNewsToday


    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022

    Categories

    All
    Abandoned Places
    Afterlife & NDE
    Alien Invasion
    Alien Life Form
    Alien Visitation
    Ancient Customs
    Ancient Disaster
    Ancient Discovery
    Ancient Necropolis
    Ancient Origins
    Animals
    Anthropology
    Archaeology
    Artificial Intelligence
    Atlantis
    Bermuda Triangle
    Biblical Mystery
    Bigfoot
    Blood Rituals
    Burials
    Catholic Church
    Celebrity Deaths
    Celebrity Story
    Cemeteries
    Cemetery Story
    Cold Case
    Cold Cases
    Cold Case Solved
    Colombia
    Crime Lord
    Crime Story
    Cryptid Story
    Cryptozoology
    Cursed Objects
    Cursed Places
    Cursed Tomb
    Cursed Voyage
    Curses
    Curses And Hexes
    Dangerous Places
    Dark Ages
    Dark History
    Dinosaur Discovery
    DNA & Cloning
    Dogman Sighting
    Doll Cemetery
    Drug Lord
    Earthquakes
    Endangered Species
    Endurance
    Exorcisms
    Extinct Animals
    Extinct Wildlife
    Future World
    Ghost Hunting
    Ghosts
    Ghost Story
    Great Lakes Mystery
    Haunted Hotel
    Haunted House
    Haunted Lake
    Haunted Lighthouse
    Haunted Pond
    Haunted Roads
    Haunted Texas
    Hidden Treasure
    Historical Mystery
    History
    Human Cloning
    Human Remains
    Human Sacrifice
    Hypnosis
    Ides Of March
    Invasive Species
    Jane Doe
    Lights In The Sky
    Living In Modern Times
    Lost City
    Lost Treasure
    Mansion Murders
    Maritime Mystery
    Medical Breakthroughs
    Men In Black
    Miami Cold Case
    Missing Person
    Mob Crimes
    Monsters
    Moon
    Murder Mystery
    Murders
    Mysterious Phenomena
    Mystery
    Nautical Mystery
    New Orleans Story
    Occult
    Old Camberwell Cemetery
    Old West Stories
    Outer Space
    Paranormal
    Paranormal News
    Paranormal Podcast
    Paranormal Story
    Peruvian Mummies
    Pop Culture
    Prepping
    Relic
    Rockets
    Science
    Secret Burials
    Serial Killer
    Shackleton
    Siamese Twins
    South America
    Space Exploration
    Spirituality
    Strange Anthropology
    Strange Collectibles
    Strange Discovery
    Strange Earth
    Strange Fairy Tale
    Strange Insects
    Strange Legends
    Strange Memorial
    Strange Obituary
    Strange Places To Die
    Strange Real Estate
    Strange Sighting
    Strange Skies
    Sunken Ships
    Sunken Treasure
    Time Keeping
    Transgender Serial Killer
    True Crime
    Tsunami
    UFO
    Unexplained Disappearances
    Urban Myth
    Vampires
    Weather Anomaly
    Weird Occurences
    Weird Science
    Werewolf Of Camberwell

    RSS Feed

    Fair Use Act Disclaimer - This site is for educational purposes only. Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976
    Copyright © 1999-2023 Eleventh Hour LLC. All Rights Reserved ®
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Miami Ghost Chronicles
    • Contact and Support
  • MP Pellicer | Author
  • Eerie News
  • Stranger Than Fiction Blog
  • Paranormal Chit Chat
  • Stories of the Supernatural
    • SOS Season 13 Jan to June 2023
    • SOS Season 12 July - Dec 2022
    • SOS Season 11 Jan - June 2022
    • SOS Season 10 July - Dec 2021
    • SOS Season 9 Jan - June 2021
    • SOS Season 8 July - Dec 2020 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S8
    • SOS Season 7 Jan - June 2020 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S7
    • SOS Season 6 July - Dec 2019 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S6
    • SOS Season 5 Jan - June 2019 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S5
    • SOS Season 4 July - Dec 2018 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S4
    • SOS Season 3 Jan - June 2018 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S3
    • SOS Season 2 July to Dec. 2017 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S2
    • SOS Season 1 Feb - June 2017 >
      • Stories of the Supernatural Podcast S1
  • Case Files & Investigations
    • Apparitions at the Asylum >
      • Rolling Hills Asylum
      • Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
    • Cemeteries >
      • Pinewood Cemetery
    • Haunted Hotels >
      • Brookdale Lodge
    • Haunted Holy Places >
      • Convent at Chacachacare Island
      • The Legend of St. Ann's Retreat
    • Haunted Prisons >
      • West Virginia Penitentiary
    • Historical Haunts >
      • Bobby Mackey's Music World
      • Drayton Hall Plantation
      • The Myrtles Plantation
    • Paranormal Cases >
      • Cases 2014
      • Cases 2015
      • Investigations I
      • Investigations II
      • Investigations III
      • Investigations IV
      • Investigations V
      • Investigations VI
      • Investigations VII
    • Animal Hauntings
    • Florida Haunted History >
      • Abandoned, Forgotten & Haunted
      • Belleview Biltmore Hotel
      • Biltmore Hotel
      • Coral Castle
      • Jonathan Dickinson State Park
      • The Devil Tree
      • Stranahan House
    • Murder Houses >
      • Kreischer Mansion