Mountineering Ghosts

Mountains like the Eiger in Swizerland and Everest in the Himalayas, as well as many other peaks throughout the world have seen a lot of deaths over the years. I was just wondering if there are any stories of ghostly climbers anyone has heard about?

Hi Dave

I can't think of any specific ghost stories or sightings in the higher mountains. They were often in the past seen as the home of the gods (Greek mythology for example) and some mountains are still sacred in some cultures i.e. Buddhism and some of the Himalayan peaks.

There is the Ben Macdhui story in Scotland:
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/hauntings/thegreyman.html
which I think is related to Mountain panic, which is outlined in the article.

One problem with mountains is that they are inhospitable places and are unlikley to have many witnesses in any event. The Eiger is relatively busy due to the railway and it's location but most of the 'infamous' fatalities have been on the less than accessable North Face.
I have heard many stories of mountaineers hallucinating caused by extreme exertion and possibly altitude: Reinhold Messner alludes to such an event in one of his books. I also know people who have had scenery change into wierd things when doing Mountain endurance events. The combination of such factors would make it very difficult to check out the validity of any sightings.

I would be interested to know of any more information though.

DJP

As long as you don't mind American stories, I think I've read one about Alaska. I'll dig through some books and try to look it up.

Do they have to be about climbers specifically, or just about people in the mountains?

doesn't have to be about mountaineers, more set in a mountainous location

No problem, I've found a few. Give me a day or two to pull the books again.

I'm sorry to take so long in posting - I went on vacation and then fell ill.

Anyway, my favorite "ghost on a mountain" story comes from Ohio. It has plenty of the traditional tropes, but was told to the collector by the person who lived it.

The teller and a friend were hiking in the Appalachian Mountains. The day had been warm, so they had dressed appropriately. When night fell, they realized that they were lost and so, rather than take chances in the dark, they decided to camp for the night in a convinient clearing. They gathered up some firewood and settled in.

As the two men sat about, they saw a shadow moving about in the woods in front of them. Eventually it turned out to be a large man with a large armful of firewood. For the next hour or so, the man went back and forth from the woods to their woodpile and back again, then disappeared into the trees.

Not long afterwards, the night turned terribly cold. The two men were not dressed for this and huddled next to the fire - and thanks to the man's wood gathering, had exactly enough wood to last the night. In the morning they looked for footprints and found none. They later learned that several other campers and hikers had similar experiences in that area without explanation.

This, no doubt, saved their lives. Even so, it must have spooked them out. Do you know if any of the accounts from other hikers vary, wombat?

My maternal great-grandmother was a midwife and nurse in an Alpine valley in the Alps in the first decades of the centuries. She used to travel alone, often at night in complete darkness, on goat-trails to reach isolated families needing her services.
As she adamantly told everybody "never saw anything unusual, even during freezing Winter nights".
In fact the only "mystery" tale she related to us (though she had not witnessed it firsthand) was the odd appearance by the ghost of one of the former village priests. But I personally think she didn't believe it and just told the tale to delight us...

Dave - the other folks who saw this man told fairly similar stories, over the course of several decades. In my biased opinion, it's entirely possible that an eccentric man living in the woods occasionally brought firewood to lost travelers... but to have his description remain the same over several decades suggests that something else was at work.