Here I explore the artwork that has been done in nature. This usually consists of my "hiking adventures", movie locations, or just some unique place that is a little out of the ordinary.
Showing posts with label The Ghosts of Chemung. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Ghosts of Chemung. Show all posts
This is a follow up to the last blog entry. Like my GoPro footage, this was my first attempt using my Anafi drone two years ago a little more seriously than I had been. When I first got this drone I would fly it straight up, take a few pictures, take some video without going too far away, then come down. My emphasis was on taking pictures, and my concern was losing the drone if I flew too far away. At the time I thought this might be the only drone I would get, which turned out not to be the case. What you will see in the video I link below is that I did have the idea of taking pictures first as I flew over the area. The moves were slow looking for potential pictures. It is not the way I do things with my current drones, but I thought I would upload this video as it does show the area above The Chemung Mine.
So the first picture is my drone just slightly up looking at the main entrance to The Chemung Mine.
Much higher to my right from the above picture, looking down on the mine:
I flew over and took this from the backside. Something mysterious is in this picture. I will explain it more below, but when I got home, I saw someone walking around between the trees on the lower left side of the picture. Can you see the person in blue?
I then flew back further to get a picture looking towards Bridgeport Lake and Sawtooth Ridge/Matterhorn Peak on the upper left side of the ridgeline.
I then flew back to where I was, and I took this shot looking down on the mine.
So here is the deal with the mysterious person in the pictures and video. What I did was when I got there was fly the drone first. I spent about ten minutes doing that. Then I walked up with my GoPro and did the footage for that video. All through this I never saw anyone at all. I came home, and a few hours later I looked through the pictures and footage on the computer. I was a bit spooked to see a person hanging out at the mine while I was there. I never saw this person.
What I think happened was that person was there with a motorcycle as I got there. I flew the drone as he was there. As I finished up with the drone, he must have taken his motorcycle and gone out on one of those other roads you see in the above picture. He did not come back through the main entrance area. I would like to tell you that he was a ghost, but this seems the logical and natural conclusion to what happened here.
However, I never saw him nor did I ever hear any motorcycle by there. I should have heard the motorcycle roar as he took off. I heard nothing.
So this officially starts my "Ghosts of the Past" series I will be doing. I started on October 1st with Donnell Vista as sort of a prelude to this series. What I will be doing in this series is going back to a bunch of places I have done before. The emphasis is on my new GoPro footage I will be releasing. So, this is why you will be seeing a bunch of (2.0) versions of the new videos. Old videos will remain.
This was my first real attempt at testing out my first GoPro (GoPro 9) at The Chemung Mine. I was not sure if I would ever release the footage or not. There are a lot of mistakes I made in the settings, a bunch of flickering due to the lighting situation, and it ended up being kind of messy. The thing is I do not mind my October videos being a little messy in that helps the spookiness of them. I am just going to upload a few pictures to show you what it looked like two years ago, link to my old blog of this area, and, of course, link to the GoPro footage.
The following are interesting. These "Sentinels of Chemung" made a lot of noise as I was wondering around. You can hear them in the GoPro video. "Nevermore!"
In light of the holiday I thought I would share with you the Chemung Mine. It’s an interesting ghost mine that can have its creepy moments when you are walking around alone in it. Yes, the ghosts protect it!
I did two versions of this video. This one has a video effect. It was the closest I could get to an old sepia type of look without it looking too bad. It is more of a tint than anything. I was going to do a lot more to this one with all sorts of special effects, but I decided that can wait for some other video. You might prefer the plain one without the effect. The plain one can be seen by scrolling down to the links at the end of this blog entry. This special edition is unlisted on Youtube so it is a reward for those of you that look at the blog:
Originally, I referred to this one as “The Ghosts of Masonic”. However, technically speaking, this area is not Masonic. Masonic is a few miles away. When I was younger my father would take me here and to Masonic as well. This mine and Masonic kind of ended up being closely connected to me so that the mention of Masonic meant this mine as well. At the last minute I redid the videos and just gave it the title this blog has so that there would be no confusion for people looking for something on Masonic.
The entrance from the road:
While the ghosts are there, I was just as concerned about a horde of zombies showing up:
You always have to be concerned about the zombies (aka the walking dead) showing up these days. At least that's what I get from seeing all those movies, tv shows, and video games.
Up behind the main structure:
Of course, the evil dead (aka the deadites) are just as dangerous of a concern here.
Really, it's the unseen ghosts that haunt this place. That is the main thing here. You don't want to damage the structures or steal anything because then the ghosts will haunt you no matter where you try to escape.
Just below that tree on the other side is the entrance to the two holes of the mine that create some very cool ventilation on a very hot day! It was like a cool air conditioned house standing in front of them. In the video you can see where I looked into the mine from up in this direction. The actual mine is gated off so you can't go into it.
Okay, so what is the history to this place? Unfortunately, I don’t think I can give you anything really dramatic like some of the historical events in Bodie or Aurora. I actually called out for help on this one since all I really knew about it could be summed up in a few sentences. I had all the top historians and e-mail friends on this mission. So, if you were one of them reading this I thank you for your help. The result ended up being what I suspected from the information I did have.
The ore that was discovered that led to this mine was found in 1909. Some of the news articles I read kind of came across like, so and so “has gained rights to the lease of the mine and now we will start seeing results.” Then, the rights to the mine would change hands again and again with the same type of optimism. That’s pretty typical of the mining history of the Eastern Sierra. The source was there, but the money and work needed to extract it would exceed the profits made.
There were twenty men working the mine in 1938, but it shut down a year later. In the 1950’s-60’s there was an individual working it, but nothing really came of that. You can read about Masonic and what is known about the Chemung Mine in the pdf of the Mono County 2004 historical newsletter linked below.
I made two sets of pictures you can look at if you are curious. The normal pictures and the ones that have that old haunted look can be found by clicking the following links:
To wrap this one up, I showed some of the pictures and video to some relatives that are much older than me. They said the buildings look a lot less like what they remember. Which would be natural since over the decades the buildings have worn down. So, what is currently up could come down altogether at some point in the years to come. Only the ghosts protect it now.
If you are in the mood, I have two more Halloween inspired videos that are from my zoo and aquarium channel. Two different animals:
