Land of the Hoosier Dawn (Events From The Hoosier Dawn Book 1)

by Nick Younker

  Start Reading

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright Information

  Prologue

  News Brief: Op-Ed from Louisville-New Albany Metro/Regional Gazette: Online edition, October 5, 2013. Article by Reina Petrow originally published in horror and sci-fi news magazine Fogstow-Jamison Morgue: Online and Print edition, October 2, 2013.

  Fogstow: 20 Years Later

  Nothing says October quite as well as Fogstow, Indiana. And nothing says Fogstow, Indiana quite as well as disaster, tragedy, murder and intrigue. Dead bodies and coal mines. Creatures and the supernatural. Of course, those have been the running theories now for 20 years, ever since the real tragedy that took place in the small Indiana town just an hour’s drive from here, in the Louisville metro area.

  But nowadays, you can’t just drive into Fogstow. The ghost town has been sealed off ever since the event that rocked the region and brought thrill seekers in from around the nation.

  So how has the legend of Fogstow progressed over the last twenty years and what kind of “riverlore” has been attributed to it?

  Well, before you start listening to those stories and what they mean to the people who tell them, let’s start off with a few facts.

  Fact #1: Fogstow was a fractured mining community. Although the coal mines had shut down years before the events of October 2, 1993, it was the deserted Oarshire Mines that played a major role in the day that would set a series of events into motion.

  Fact #2: Izzy Brown! Yes, the leading lady from iconic goth-rock band Izzy Lives was actually from the small town, and legend has it that she went back there just before she disappeared.

  In fact, this reporter was covering the story for the Louisville-New Albany Metro/Regional Gazette back in 1993, and I found out that she was in town on Oct. 2 of that year, which was the day the event took place. But she got out just before it reached critical mass.

  For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past two decades, Izzy Brown went missing on June 23, 1994. At least, that was when she was last seen. This was just days before the release of her debut album, Two-Ton Moon, which went on to sell over 20 million copies. At the time, it was considered a posthumous release.

  Fact #3: Disasters happen. This town is no different from any other town that has faced an industrial tragedy. You don’t have to chalk that up to supernatural forces or mysterious creatures. These kinds of tragedies are real.

  With that said, let’s talk about the legacy Fogstow left behind. The legacy that has caught the nation’s attention and vivid imagination. Even Hollywood has been chomping at the bit to take a bite out of this mysterious story.

  Details from the devastation left behind have been a closely guarded secret by state and federal officials. Jamison County is still in litigation with parent mining company Oarshire Inc. regarding its former mining operation in the county. It has been cited for multiple violations against the terms of its lease and state reclamation mandates.

  Although some accounts that emerged from ground zero have indicated there was more devastation there than just the disastrous mine incident, Oarshire representatives have been fighting the state and the feds for detailed reports that have been classified now for the past two decades.

  Denial of access to these reports could ultimately get Oarshire off the hook for financial responsibility to the victims and their families. This Catch-22 has fueled independent investigations into the incident. People have gone missing over the course of these investigations, which occurred in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

  You might also say that what’s taken place after that day is almost as interesting as what happened on that day.

  Chapter 1

  Opening Day

  ***

  1

  It wasn't only the smell of frying bacon and eggs that riled appetites in Fogstow, Indiana in the early morning hours. The sound of the food cooking was enough to bring everyone to the serving counter ready for a hearty breakfast and a good reason to start the day among people they knew and cared about.

  Even though the Riverbend Deli and Grill was originally meant to be a lunch counter, it had grown over the years to bring in the breakfast and dinner crowds. As more time went by, the late night barge traffic and the recreational boaters on the Ohio River gave it a reason to expand to some overnight hours, and before long, it was the place to go for dinner in eastern Jamison county, with the exception of the Elk’s Club on Saturday nights. There was also a Tastee Freeze out on Fischer Road just before the Highway 66 onramp, which was a quick in-and-out for ice cream and chili dogs.

  But the Riverbend is where the community came together and ate dinner, laughed at each other’s stories, arranged carpool plans for the school days and made PTO decisions. It was where they came to hold booster club meetings for their small high school and where the Tiger Scouts earned their merit badges. It was also where they all met to form a search party for the boy who went missing on the rolling pine hills and for the young female musician who went missing out on the river.

  The Riverbend was right there in the heart of their nice little town of just over 1,200 residents. It sat next to the Co-op, which also had an A&W stand on the backside next to the hay bales and grain tanks, where trucks entered off Locust Street.

  The Riverbend (or just the ’Bend, as the townsfolk liked to call it) and the Co-op both sat high on the bluff overlooking the Fogstow channel, which fed in from the Ohio River. They also overlooked the old Weyerbacher Coal Docks, which now host the Stow Tavern and various river recreational shops, including Anderson Bait and Tackle, Fogstow Marine Supply and a small gas terminal. The old docks still took in a lot of river commerce once the Weyerbacher Coal Yard and Docks closed down.

  The coal docks were quite active in the ’70s and early ’80s, with the Ayrlobe coal quarry just a couple of miles to the northeast and the gigantic Oarshire coal quarry half a mile west of town, just before you get into the Hoosier National Forest. Oarhsire originally owned the stripping operation on the northeast end of town, but when talk about organizing into a labor union started in the late ’70s, Oarshire split the leases and isolated the union agitators in the northeast quarry, then sold it off to Ayrlobe.

  Ayrlobe came in and got the operation running again, but they never built a belt line to the coal docks because their grandfathered laborers were getting irritated by the $5.75 an hour pay rate. They brought the union talk back into the equation and Ayrlobe decided they would rather shut the operation down completely instead of paying their workers a living wage.

  The Oarshire beltline fed the yard and sometimes even loaded the barges without the assistance of the dock cranes. Most of the time, the barges were fed by the belt. But when there was an overflow, the coal got deposited in the yard and the cranes loaded the barges. There were even a few times when they had to hold the belt line just to get more barges in for immediate loading because the yard was too full. That entire area had been blackened down to a coal dust wasteland before the mines were stripped clean and closed down back in ’82. Workers voted a union in about 16 months before the mine closed, without much slack from the company. Most people thought Oarshire likely knew the operation was winding down due to a depletion of the natural resources, so they didn’t put up much resistance to the union vote.

  The Weyerbachers kept the Fogstow townsfolk working by leasing dock space to crushed stone companies for barge loading. But once those companies started building their own yards back in ’84 and running their rock straight out of
the quarries onto the barges, they shut down permanently.

  The people of Fogstow didn’t exactly truck out of town, though. They found work in nearby Barrelton or they commuted to Louisville, even though it was over an hour’s drive. Some also found work in the nearby Cape Sandy quarry, working the crushed stone mines and keeping the barges moving. When the New Amsterdam quarry opened up on the other side of the river bend, it created more avenues of income for the townspeople and Fogstow survived. Sure, a few might have left town after the docks closed, but most of them just settled in nearby Derbie because it was closer to Barrelton. Derbie was just a quick hop across the National Forest and most of the transplants frequently visited Fogstow.

  The simple fact was, this town had something that most others had failed to accomplish in the early ’90s; a sense of community. It was like their own little version of that TV show, Where Everybody Knows Your Name. 1993 was a time of trust, friendship, partnership and, most importantly, safety. No one locked their doors during the daytime when they shipped off to school or work. There was really no need. The people of this town were active; during the day, most people got out and did their business in town. Everyone was everyone else’s neighbor and neighbors looked out for each other and their property. They locked their doors at night, though. Drifters from the Interstate would wander in to town, looking for a quick score.

  Fogstow was a small town settled on the high bluffs of the Fogstow channel in Jamison County. The channel ran nearly a quarter mile inland from the Ohio River and terminated at the old coal docks. Although it was fairly deep inland, that didn't stop the river traffic from coming in. The county let them post a small wooden billboard on the edge of the river pointing into the channel for recreational supplies and necessities, which included the small business community that took over the Weyerbacher docks. The town invested a lot of tax dollars fixing them up and the business there prospered.

  On most days, and all through the night, a johnboat, or a johnny, as the natives would call them, would roll in from the stone barges and pick up some takeout from the ’Bend. They always radioed in their orders from CBs because the deckhands could only be gone for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. The barges had to keep rolling to stay on delivery schedules, but a johnny motor could easily outrun the barges, so they were able to make the runs and catch back up to their barge. The ’Bend servers would always walk the orders down dockside and have them ready when they pulled up. They all ran charge accounts, so the deckhand would just scribble down a signature on a charge slip and take off with their food. The companies would come in every month and pay off their tabs. That’s just how smooth things ran in their channel, driven by trust and respect.

  The Weyerbacher docks sat at the bottom of the Fogstow bluff and a long set of concrete stairs led up to the main business district with the ’Bend, the Co-op and other various businesses including a hardware store and a funeral parlor. Adams Street led into the docks and most of the residential area circled around three rolling pine hills. The residential areas, although not considered subdivisions, were still separated into four main districts that divided them out.

  One section was named Squaw Creek, which fed right up to the docks from Adams Street and was visible from the highland “uptown” area. It was always a part of the town and most of the people who lived there were multi-generational and had spent their entire lives in Fogstow.

  Another was called Turkey Crossing, or the TC, which was settled on the west side of the tallest pine hill. This wasn’t a part of Fogstow until the late ’80s. A lot of the more affluent townsfolk built homes in this area to avoid paying local taxes in the early ’80s. The town waited until the area filled up and annexed it in ’89. But Fogstow never optioned to expand their sewer system underneath it due to fear of sinkholes collapsing the area. Most believed the original mine shafts and utility caves were never filled in, which violated the reclamation terms of the county lease and many other state and federal mandates.

  There was another area generally referred to as Alcatraz Beach (or the Beach, by some) because if you stood in the middle of it, you couldn’t tell if it was in the remote wilderness or part of a larger community. It was also an area that was level to the river and ideal for swimming, although no one dared swim in the polluted Ohio. The town of Fogstow annexed the Beach in 1989 along with the TC, then expanded their sewer system underneath it to collect town sewer fees. Even though it was part of Fogstow you cannot see the town from it because Pine 1 was blocking it. It fed into the bend on the river, so some people just came together and built a makeshift private dock and ran their boats over to the coal docks when they wanted to come downtown. The town built a small park around their dock area and a utility barn so they could give the Beach community a sense of belonging. Most of the people in Alcatraz Beach liked living in a more remote area of the town. But they were still close enough to do their business without having to drive all the way down to Barrelton.

  The highland district, or uptown area, had a few older homes in and around it on the main level, but it was mostly older folk or town officials who resided there. They did build a town park over the western bluff that overlooked their large channel and they also built a trail (with Jamison County funds) all the way up to the Ohio River for hiking and exercise. The whole area there had been leveled decades earlier from the earliest Oarshire coal mines, but the reclaim land had been growing nicely over the past 40 years. Oarshire stripped all the western area and most of Jamison County leading into the National Forest over the course of about 75 years. Wild brush and trees grew in and put some fantastic shade on the trail. But a little further west of the trail, maybe half a mile, there was a sinkhole that swallowed up the area and the county had it off limits to the general public, with a lawsuit pending against Oarshire. Teens and children saw that as a challenge and spent a lot of time in the area exploring or just cutting loose and doing wild things. It was kind of like a magnet to youth of all ages, likely because there was a total absence of adult supervision.

  Main Street ran north and south in front of the ’Bend and the Co-op, and then wrapped around heading due west toward Highway 66 and East Jamison High School. The ’Bend faced Main Street and the gravel parking lot came up on the wrap around, which sat adjacent to the park. Highway 66, heading west toward Derbie, had a few scattered homes that littered the area beside a lot of reclaim land with small brush and a few trees, and you could tell nature was struggling to reclaim the land once ravaged by the coal mines. The landscape looked like a semi-barren Serengeti. Bobcats and mountain lions even roamed it, but they were rarely seen, especially during the day.

  Highway 66 was the express route to Interstate 64 heading north and Barrelton heading south. Barrelton was a much bigger city than Fogstow and was also the Jamison County seat, so there was a lot of business that most folk had to tend to there.

  In the middle of Fogstow, leading north, Main Street came around and ran parallel to Squaw Creek. The area was much lower than the main district and that is where you could find the local supermarket, video store and various small businesses including Bev’s Beauty Salon and Gil’s Convenience Store and Gas Station. Gil’s also doubled as a taxidermist and a deer meat processing shop.

  In the fall, scores of trucks would line up in front of Gil’s every Saturday morning just before dawn, leave for several hours and then come back with deer strapped to their hoods or in the bed of their trucks. The kids would get out their three-wheel ATVs and make passes around the large rock parking lot shaking their strawberry soda bottles and spraying each other with them while their dads struck up racy conversations with each other and hauled their catches inside for tagging and processing. Their wives would usually wait until Saturday afternoon to come into the beauty salon because they certainly did not want to be around the primitive feeding frenzies that took place there with their husbands and children. That gave the men enough time when they got home to take their kids up on Pine Hill for a round of snipe hunting.
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  The Saturday snipe hunts were fully endorsed by the town, and they always wheeled the concession stand out and sold strawberry and cream sodas from the fountain along with Grippos Barbecue Chips. The kids would follow their dads’ strict instructions to rustle up the brush on the side of the hill and scare the snipe out of hiding. They said the snipe all had one leg longer than the other so they could run along the hillside. The kids were all instructed to scare them out of the brush, chase them down and hogtie their legs, then bring them back down for inspection. Of course this was all a bogus trick on the youth, but it was a rite of passage for the younger generations and was carried down year after year. The men would sit at the bottom of the hill on their trucks, drinking beer and hosing the blood out of their beds while the kids would run all along the sides of Pine 2, rustling through the brush and screaming like banshees. Everyone always had a good time.

  The supermarket was open every night until 8 p.m. and served the entire community, along with Derbie. It even got some Barrelton traffic. It was well known for having the freshest meat in the county. Their deli was also known for the best array of salads, which included German potato salad, deviled-egg salad, Coney Island spread and various other delicious small-town concoctions.

  On the northern end of town, Main Street led all the way back out to Highway 66 because it formed an “L” shape running east and west before it got to town, then north and south when it ran through town. But before you got to the north end of Squaw Creek, it forked apart, with Main Street Baptist Church directly in the middle. This was by far the biggest church, and congregation, in town. The church building itself occupied a little more than an acre of land with two levels on the north end and a full vaulted ceiling sanctuary on the south end that rose two stories. The gigantic parking lot that occupied the northern and western sides of the building had a large picnic area on the north end accompanied by a soccer and baseball field that split in two.