THE HORROR OF CANNIBAL CANYON

THE HORROR OF CANNIBAL CANYON

BY LARRY J. DELLINGES

The year was 1848 just two years after the terrible tragedy that occurred in the unforgiving and mysterious mountains of California’s High Sierra’s. Of course I’m referring to the historically ill-fated journey known to all as the Donner Party. Sadly in those days as well as the present many lives where taken and extinguished by the forces of Mother Nature and just as many spared. Those poor innocent souls trapped in the freezing snow without food or water was unthinkable, but to resort to consuming human flesh with no other choices for survival is a another matter indeed. One of which I hope none of us will ever have to face in our lifetime. Having family members as dinner guests with the Donner party on that journey took on an entirely different meaning to the phrase, what’s for dinner? One unknown surviving member by the name of Potts Miller knew ever so well from experience what it was like more so than others. You see Potts Miller was one of the original eighty-four souls of that condemned Donner Party, but for soulless Miller this second trip was a vacation in the snow offering an unlimited variety of all you can eat?

Coined with the handle Potts due to a moon crater complexion, Miller had a gruesome secret only his victims could tell that is if they were alive to tell it. But on this journey west Miller was back again, back to his demonic and ghoulish ways of murder and terror. Party members wouldn’t cross his path and most of the children hid in their wagons when Miller was near. One little girl on the journey called him Mister Cow Patty, telling her Mother he looked and smelled just like one? When Miller overheard the child’s comment he stuck out his long scarred purplish tongue at her and started to howl like what only could be described as a creature from hell. Always trying to outdo himself sometimes Miller would catch a handful of flies and pull them in his mouth. And while finding a child staring at him as they often did, he’d open his mouth allowing any live ones to escape with their lives. And for those flies that did it appeared like Miller’s rotting teeth where flying right out of his mouth. 

Most of the time very few flies survived this ordeal, not even the big ones, so Miller would swallow them whole making a gulping sound like a flat bottomed Tandy Toad or a stump broken mare sucking wind? Sometimes he would blow flies out of his nose telling anyone who was watching he had a nest of them living in his skull? Everyone knew what flies were attracted to and especially what they dined on so the name Mister Cow Patty hit right on the mark. All the young children on the trip were closely guarded from the likes of Potts Miller by the rest of the party. No one knew where Miller had come from or even when or where he joined the wagon train. He just suddenly appeared bringing with him a red stain of chilling terror that would never be erased from anyone’s memory from present time to eternity. Anyway somehow it seemed to everyone in an uneasy way he was watching them, counting each party member as if they were his private stock of butchering hogs destined to the slaughter house.    To be continued!