The Ghost Who Needed a Shave

A gold rush started in the colony of British Columbia in 1858 when gold was struck in the now-abandoned town of Hill's Bar in the Fraser Canyon region. The town that would become the centrepiece of this sudden outbreak of gold fever was to be named after the miner Billy Barker - thus it was called Barkerville. Wethering fire and mass bankruptcy, the town seemed to be like an unstoppable locomotive of success. However, all good things come to an end - and by the end of the 19th century the population was declining rapidly. It enjoyed a brief resurgence in the 1930s thanks to the Great Depression causing the price of gold to skyrocket, but this wasn't enough to keep it on the map in the long term. Eventually it was basically abandoned - and now stands as a perfectly preserved example of what life in the so-called Cariboo Gold Rush was like. The still-standing buildings are now part of an expansive open-air tourist attraction, and have been since 1958. However, if the stories are to be believed, not all of the gold rush era inhabitants of the town were entirely content to leave, even when their lives ended...

## Spectre of the Gold Rush

Okay, the introduction might've been a bit misleading. There are several ghost stories detailing modern encounters with ancient leftover spirits from the gold rush era, but today's story is not one of them. The incident about which we shall be talking today actually took place in 1866, when the town was still at the height of its popularity. Our central figure is one Mr. Wellington Delaney Moses - a black man who was able to run a successful barber shop in Barkerville. He kept this shop open from Spring to Fall each year, and would spend the cold Canadian Winters in the milder climate of New Westminster. It was here that he met a young American man named Morgan Blessing, and the two quickly became friends.

Moses and Blessing (wow those names) caught the gold fever in the Spring of 1866, and decided to embark on a journey North to the Cariboo gold fields as a pair. They picked up another wanderer on their road trip, a somewhat downtrodden Texan gambler by the name of James Barry. Barry was evidently something of a dodgy character, and he was soon able to drive a wedge between the once-close Moses and Blessing. Moses lost his Blessing, so to speak. As a result, Moses was forced to leave the group and head on to the promised land of Barkerville on his own. He actually arrived in Barkerville before either of his former companions, and so perhaps this was a tortoise and the hare situation. However, only one of his companions ever arrived in Barkerville. Take a wild guess as to which of them this was. James Barry arrived in Barkerville seemingly quite a bit richer than he had been on the road, and Morgan Blessing was missing. Moses eventually got round to directly asking Barry what had happened to his friend - and Barry denied knowing anything about the fate of the young man. Moses would soon come to suspect that Barry was lying, though, and he would come to this conclusion thanks to supernatural intervention.

The heat was sweltering on one June afternoon in 1866, and the bell that I like to imagine was above the door in Moses's barber shop pinged as the door creaked open. A familiar figure stumbled into the shop - it was Morgan Blessing. Moses was delighted (but a little surprised) to see his friend alive. However, alive might've been something of an optimistic assumption. Blessing's clothes were wet and mouldy, and a matted beard clung to his pale and corpselike face. He lumbered over to the heavy wooden chair in the barber shop and sat down, silently indicating that he wanted Moses to shave his beard. Moses obliged, wrapping a warm towel around Blessing's face and then setting about stropping his straight razor. However, he had only just started stropping when he caught sight of something horrifying. The towel around Blessing's head had soaked through with blood. Blessing then silently vanished - giving Moses a clear message. Morgan Blessing was dead - probably murdered by one James Barry.

Moses went to local law enforcement and shared his suspicions, but the police had no choice but to brush off the report due to the lack of evidence that Blessing was even dead to begin with, much less that he had been murdered by his travelling partner. Luckily, they would soon have proof - and Moses would soon have confirmation of his suspicions. A shallow grave was found at Beaver Pass on the 22nd of September, 1866. The severely decomposed remains of Morgan Blessing were found inside, and there was a single bullet hole in the back of his skull. James Barry was arrested promptly after this - seeing as he had been stupid enough to give a local sweetheart of his a gold nugget scarf pin shaped like an angel - a pin which was known to have belonged to Morgan Blessing. Barry was charged with murder, and in July of the following year he was tried and found guilty. He would hang for his crime. It seemed as if Mr. Blessing had been able to get justice from beyond the grave...

## Source

'Ghost Stories of British Columbia' by Jo-Anne Christensen