Ghosts of Our Past

I grew up in a little town on the prairie (think Deadwood rather than Little House) called Hays, Kansas.

Almost in the geographic center of the state, Hays is a city bolstered by a local university, proximity to that great artery, I-70, and a notable Oktoberfest which features epic amounts of beer, bierocks, and an increase of around 300000% in the urine content of the creek that has the misfortune of running adjacent to the event.

It wasn’t the worst place to grow up. We had two hospitals and an old-fashioned, brick Main Street which high school students were known to drag on a Friday or Saturday evening.

Law enforcement often had a sense of humor. For instance, we didn’t even get into any trouble when we spray painted an entire herd of Charolais (they’re all-white cows) various shades of neon with temporary hair coloring we found on sale for ten-cents-a-can post-Halloween. The cop, after tracking us all down in school, (turns out temporary just means “will wash off at some point but not immediately”) just said, “Dammit, kids. I feel like I shouldn’t have to tell you not to go out and paint an entire herd of cows!”

Then he started laughing.

We made the front page of the paper for that one.

The Rev pretended not to be amused, but it was pretty difficult to keep a straight face when she had to drive past a herd of pink, blue, green and orange cows every day.

When I started looking into the city to research this article, one writer described Hays as “an idyllic American town nestled in the heart of the prairie.”

To this, I can only respond that it appears the aforementioned author has neither been to Hays nor seen any pictures. “To each their own,” quoth the milkmaid as she kissed the (neon blue) cow.

In my travels, most people who have been to (or, more likely, through) Hays have so often said, “Oh, Hays! My car broke down there once” that the city’s unofficial motto might as well be, “Hays: Your Car Probably Broke Down Here.” Or, alternately, “Hays, Kansas: Do You Need a Mechanic?”

Since, as teenagers, our choices for weekend activities were limited to a party somewhere or dragging Main Street (because honking at people you saw on the last lap two minutes ago never gets old), sometimes we’d get bored and go ghost hunting.

Hays is an old city, founded in around 1867 when the U.S. Army relocated a Fort there. The combination of a local water source (Big Creek, and yes, that’s the one from Oktoberfest) and the arrival of the railroad caused the population to spike to around 2,000 people in a matter of months.

This, predictably, caused a cholera outbreak.

Elizabeth Polly

Elizabeth Polly was the young wife of a hospital steward at the Fort. She worked tirelessly during the epidemic, treating soldiers and helping many through their final hours. In the evenings, she would walk away from the hospital tents to the top of a nearby hill (now called Sentinel Hill) where it is said that she would find some solace and salve for her weary spirit.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth contracted cholera as a result of working so closely with the sick and dying, and she succumbed to the disease in 1867.

Her one request was that she be buried on top of the hill that she so loved, but unfortunately, the found as they tried to dig the hole, that the ground was limestone bedrock. They instead buried Elizabeth wearing her blue dress and white bonnet at the foot of the hill, erecting four limestone posts as markers at the top.

The local legend goes that those markers were stolen soon after by four thieves, each of whom met a swift and messy end: one was run over by a train, two were killed in a gunfight, and the last died in a stagecoach accident.

People have witnessed Polly’s ghost walking near the hill (a woman in a blue dress) since her death.

To this day, people report a blue light bobbing at the top of Sentinel Hill, and the local paper runs reports of sightings.

We never saw anything, despite a copious amount of stumbling around in the dark. I can’t tell you how many chunks of rock I tripped over on that hill. It’s possible that all the yelling scared her away.

After all, I imagine even a ghost wouldn’t want to deal with a bevy of idiot teenagers.

Someone was probably honking their horn.

Today, Hays has a park named after Elizabeth Polly that features a sculpture by world-famous artist and local son, Pete Felten. 

It is, however, the lonely and desolate hill where the prairie grass waves like eddies in the ocean, that Elizabeth sometimes lights blue.

If your car ever breaks down, maybe you can go check it out. 

However, the Sternberg Museum has cheesy animatronic dinosaurs.

I think you know what to do.