Louis L'Amour and the Paranormal

One of my all-time favorite authors is Louis L’Amour (1908–1988). L'Amour is best known for his western novels. He was born in North Dakota, and his father settled there before it became a state. Surely L’Amour’s Dakota upbringing shaped him and gave him a solid background for his writing. Over the course of his life, he authored over 250 short stories and 100 novels. By 2010, L’Amour’s works had sold in excess of 320 million copies! That is a metric fuck ton of sales, believe me. I will do somersaults and throw ninja spin kicks into the air while singing “We Are the Champions” when I hit one thousandth of that sales number. Seriously, I will.

President Ronald Reagan signed legislation in 1982 awarding L’Amour the Congressional Gold Medal. Reagan said that L’Amour had “brought the West to the people of the East and to people everywhere.” Indeed. Since my late teenage years, L’Amour’s stories had me daydreaming of the West. Had I not read the books The Daybreakers, Conagher, Lonely on the Mountain, Mojave Crossing, The Lonely Men, and countless others, I might not have sold my house and took off in an RV to explore the country—especially the West.

Unorthodox Ideas

Though L'Amour mostly wrote fiction set in the Old West, his books introduced me to concepts that stuck with me throughout my life. His books touch on subjects such as pre-Columbian explorers in the New World and mammoths and mastodons living into fairly recent times—things I have written about in my books. A 1985 Washington Post review of L’Amour’s Jubal Sackett mentioned the unorthodox ideas L’Amour inserted into his stories:

To some, the greatest appeal of this particular Sackett novel will be its hints of ancient wonders, of old tribes and lost races. L’Amour does not believe that American history began as recently as the schoolbooks told us it did. He has researched the venerable legends—of Madoc the lost Welsh explorer, of possible Phoenician or Carthaginian trade with North America’s Indians, of the lost race of bearded men whose ghosts reigned in Kentucky, of the giant Ice Age mammals which even [Thomas] Jefferson believed still walked the unexplored West. A hundred years after Jubal’s fictitious trek, Jefferson told Lewis and Clark to keep an eye out for mammoths and giant sloths on their journey to the Pacific. Indians as late as the early 19th Century reported having seen mammoths and hunted them, and L’Amour, like Jefferson, chooses to give them credence.

The “New World” is an older world than we have been conditioned to believe, and L’Amour does his readers a service by recalling ancient mysteries to bemuse them.

The Haunted Mesa and the Californios

L’Amour dabbled in the paranormal in some of his books. In The Californios and The Haunted Mesa, he wrote about portals or openings to other worlds. In The Californios, one of the villains in the story lets his lust for gold get the better of him in 1840s coastal California. He ventures into the mysterious realm of the “Old Ones” in the California backcountry where he happens upon a strange altar. Here, he is transported to “somewhere else.” After being missing for about a week, he shows up at a fandango. Ranchers and landowners from all around are at the party, and folks recognize him, but he has changed. Only days before he was young and strong, but during his brief absence he aged decades and turned into a feeble old man knocking on death’s door.

In The Haunted Mesa, L’Amour’s characters travel through openings between this world and an alternate, evil world. Their main access point is through a window in a kiva at an old cliff dweller site on top of a lonely, remote mesa. But there are other openings, too—unpredictable windows that can open and close at any time without warning. Ruthless people from the evil world tightly guard these openings. Moreover, they have set up operations here in our world to keep an eye on us.

I have always believed that L’Amour was right on the money with many of the untraditional ideas he weaved into his stories. I wonder if we get visitors from "someplace else"—could they be behind the "men in black" stories? Could these portals explain strange disappearances?

I discuss L'Amour in the fifth book of my Detours Into the Paranormal series. I recently released an audio version of the book narrated by a professional voice act

My Most Popular Posts

Giant Bones in West Virginia

Image
When the Bible famously declared that “there were giants on the earth in those days,” in Genesis 6:4, the writer wasn’t kidding—especially when it comes to West Virginia. In the early days of our nation, people routinely unearthed giant bones in the Mountain State. Giant Bones Countless newspapers and county histories in the 1800s told the story of giant bones. Stories such as these were commonplace: “It is said that a jawbone was plowed up near Moorefield which would pass over the outside of a common man's lower jaw; that it contained eight jaw teeth on either side, and that they sat transversely in their sockets. A bone of that size would have belonged to a man eight or nine feet high… Another jawbone of enormous size is recorded as having been discovered near Martinsburg.” Hu Maxwell and H. L. Swisher,  History of Hampshire County West Virginia from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present  (Morgantown, WV: A. Brown Boughner, 1897) “While digging a grave on Trace Fork, Lincoln
Read more

The Giants from the West

Image
The ethnologist James Mooney (1861–1921) wrote of ancient giants in his 1902 book, Myths of the Cherokee . The section titled "The Giants from the West" is an intriguing account. I have reprinted it below: THE GIANTS FROM THE WEST James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had heard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil' kalu', "The Slant-eyed people," because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul'kalu' (see the story). They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the we
Read more

The Giants of Ancient Tennessee

Image
John Haywood (1753-1826) was a historian known as the "father of Tennessee history." These days, he might be best known for documenting giant skeletons found in Tennessee, as well as popularizing the "Tennessee Pygmies." In Haywood's 1823 work, The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee , he documented several unique discoveries. These include giant skeletons found in Tennessee, particularly in and around White County. Haywood devoted a section to the giant skeletons found in Tennessee in his book. The entire section (Chapter VIII, section 1) is printed below: First, then—Of their Size. This is ascertained by the length and dimensions of the skeletons which are found in East and West Tennessee. These will prove demonstratively, that the ancient inhabitants of this country, either the primitive or secondary settlers, were of gigantic stature , compared with the present races of Indians.  On the farm of Mr. John Miller, of White county, are a numbe
Read more

Pensacola Sea Monster Attacks Teenage Boys

Image
On March 26, 1962, the Ocala Star-Banner ran an article about a Pensacola sea monster that attacked five teenage boys. The piece was titled “4 Teenage Skindivers Still Missing After Raft is Abandoned.” The text of the story is as follows: Four teenaged skindivers remained missing today after abandoning their tide-swept rubber raft in the Gulf of Mexico Saturday. A fifth youth swam two miles to shore about dark Saturday. The four were Bradford Rice, 14, Warren Felley, 16, Eric Ruyle, 16, and Larry Stuart Bill, 17. The fifth youth was Brian McCleary, 16 found sleeping on a beach near Fort McRae early Sunday. McCleary said he and the other four were skindiving in the gulf when the tide began carrying them to sea. Swells broke over their raft. He said they tried to move to a buoy but missed. Then, he said, they abandoned the raft to swim ashore. The raft washed ashore on Gulf Beach. Face masks, shoes, and fins were inside. McCleary said he, Bill and Ruyle developed cra
Read more

The Wa-gas

Image
In her book To the American Indian, Lucy Thompson (1856–1932), a member of the Yurok tribe whose Yurok name was Che-na-wah Weitch-ah-wah, recorded many of the tales of her people. One of the most interesting stories in the book is that of the Wa-gas. According to Thompson, the Wa-gas were an ancient race of white people that lived in North America many thousands of years ago. However, these folks were much different than Europeans who colonized the Americas in recent times. The following excerpt comes from Thompson’s book in a section titled “ Traditions of the Ancient White People” :
Read more

A Large Turtle

Image
Large turtle tales are among my favorite types of cryptid encounters . Perhaps that is why I spent over a week on the outskirts of Roswell, New Mexico in 2022. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of the fabled large turtles the "size of a Volkswagen." (I did not.) Maybe the best turtle tale is the story of Oscar, the Beast of Busco. This enormous turtle, with a shell as big as "the top of a car" caused a ruckus in an Indiana town in 1949. In 1883, the Scientific American published a blurb about a large turtle—large is an understatement!—spotted at sea. I reprinted the entire text below: A Large Turtle "Captain Augustus G. Hall and the crew of the schooner Annie L. Hall vouch for the following: On March 30, while on the Grand Bank, in latitude 40° 10’, longitude 33°, they discovered an immense live trunk turtle, which was at first thought to be a Reptiles and Amphibians 535 vessel bottom up. The schooner passed within twenty-five feet of the monster, and those on bo
Read more

Paw Paw Tunnel

Image
The Paw Paw Tunnel in Oldtown, Maryland goes back to the days of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, better known as the C&O Canal. The C&O Canal operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland. The canal was primarily used to transport coal from the Allegheny Mountains. Building the 184-mile canal was a huge undertaking at the time; the lands to the west were remote and mountainous. A section of the canal, in Allegany County, Maryland, just across the river from present-day Paw Paw, West Virginia had to be bored through a mountain in order to bypass the Paw Paw bends, a 6-mile section of the Potomac with several horseshoe bends. Work on the tunnel began in 1836 and was completed in 1850. However, the tunnel was initially estimated to be complete in 1838. The work was slow-going and hazardous; using only hand tools and dynamite, works were only able to tunnel about 12 feet per day. Cave-ins were commonplace, as were injuries and
Read more

The "Mystery Noises" in Moodus

Image
When I arrived in Moodus, Connecticut in early-May 2022, I was surprised when a friend texted me an article from the New England Historical Society. The piece was titled “The Mysterious Moodus Noises of Connecticut,” and recounted the history of strange, unexplained noises that occur around the village of Moodus. The Moodus Noises I read the article at once. I couldn't believe that I had stumbled upon a place renowned for strange activity. According to the article: The Wangunk Indians had told the colonists of the fearful noises that they tried to appease. In fact, the Indians called the land around Mt. Tom “Machemoodus,” meaning place of bad noises. The settlers shortened the name to Moodus, now a village in East Haddam. Once Puritans moved to the area in the early-1700s, they heard the noises, too. And they, too, attributed the sounds to a supernatural source. The superstitious Puritans believed God was angry with them for their sins. Meanwhile, the local Indians believed the
Read more

Bigfoot Musings From the Lowcountry

Image
The Lowcountry of South Carolina is a great destination. The food and the beaches are amazing. Cities such as Beaufort and Charleston are full of history, stunning architecture, and antebellum homes with manicured lawns that embody the deep South. Large oak trees draped with Spanish moss form canopies along narrow streets and side roads. And of course, there is Bigfoot. Visits to Lowcountry I spent a week in the Lowcountry in the summer of 2020 and again in January 2022. But I was a good hour’s drive from Hilton Head; thirty minutes away from Beaufort; and around forty-five minutes from Charleston. I stayed at a campground “in the middle of nowhere.” The nearest town was Yemassee—a small community whose roads leading in were riddled with potholes the size of kitchen sinks. The point of this post is not potholes, Spanish moss, or antebellum homes—Bigfoot is the star here. As I usually do when I arrive in a new place, I began thinking of the elusive beast. I checked the Bigfoot Field Re
Read more