The Ghostly Donner Party Diary.

By Nadia A.

Chapter I

Have you ever heard of the Donner party? Well I know about them, for I was one of them! Let me introduce myself properly. How do you do, my name is Baylis Williams and I was part of the Donner Party. You may have not heard of me before, but if you have, you definitely did not hear the whole story. When all eighty-seven of us finalized our plans for the long journey to California, I finally paused and just stood next to my horse not moving. I finally realized that this will be the longest trip I have ever, and will ever, be undertaking in my entire life!

“Two thousand-five hundred miles…” I mumbled just quietly enough for no one to hear. I laughed at myself and thought that I will have a blast and should not worry. I then hopped upon my horse and moved with our group of eighty-seven people moving forward to California (as they call it now a days).

From minutes to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, weeks to months! We are still traveling after we agreed to travel the recommended “short cut” that we thought sounded great (it was the reason why we took several months just to become stranded in the thick snow of the disastrous Sierra Nevada mountains!).

I only survived the middle of it, I died right when the hard parts began because of the cold. Because of the cold I was eaten along with many others in order for the living to survive. “How am I still alive?” you might ask. Well I am one of the walking souls from the Donner Party. The Donner Party ate people? Well, since you asked so nicely… Yes, they did, they packed a lot of food, but because of the “genius” short cut someone made (I do not know the person who made the dumb mistake), the walk took much much longer.

While some kids in the twenty first century listen to pop music like “I am so happy” in their warm home eating glorious food, I wonder if the person who invented this song just tried to make a depressed person smile because not everything is happy! Who on earth can listen to that when there are people like the Donner family or the Addams Family (for some reason everyone acts like the Addams Family is from a movie)! Almost everyone in the Donner Family died from diseases, hunger, thirst, and the cold. Like I said earlier, some people were eaten, but only after they died from some other sad event.

After the Donner family finally arrived at California, I headed back to Donner Lake so I could see what I missed (since there was a blizzard practically the whole time we traveled) I saw frozen solid bodies everywhere! I have never felt so sad and horrified as much as that terrifying moment, and this is most of my family and friends’ bodies. I felt as if I were the only person alive, although I knew I was dead.

Suddenly after a brief moment, there was a white mist coming out of nowhere! I looked around to see if I could find where it was coming from, then I found the place where all that white cold mist was coming from, the dead bodies! After a very long twenty minutes or so there were what had looked like one-hundred ghosts!

Chapter II

When I say one-hundred ghosts I mean spirits… One-hundred spirits, but there were more spirits than there were dead people! As I was floating around, I could not but help overhear some ladies talk about their children, but when I looked… The women who were intruding their children did not have children before. I started drowning with questions in my head “Where did the children come from?” “Who are the children?” “Are the children the lady’s children or do they belong to someone else?” I was clearly deep in thought for I tripped and got an A+ for embarrassing myself. As the kind children checked to see if I was hurt, I saw their bright eyes filled with wonder and joy. I thought this was a good time to ask where the children came from, so I did. “Where did you get the children my dear ladies?” I asked a little embarrassed. The lady replied with a sad face “When I passed away from the cold, I was actually pregnant, and because I died my babies died to.” I felt really ashamed of myself then, but I tried thinking of something, anything that could make everyone laugh one again.

I floated upon a log and shouted, “I have an announcement to make!” I paused, and everyone started staring at me, then I resumed “Who loves a good ball!” and everyone shouted “huzzah!” with excitement. I knew that we had two options. to go to a city to get some instruments or we needed to make them ourselves. I found an old violin and about a half mile from where I was ,one of my friends found a flute and the another found a cello. All three of us played different songs and everyone danced.

I noticed that everyone started fading but I kept playing and soon all of us were in a place where the streets were paved with gold; they were so shiny and clean I was surprised people were allowed to even walk on them. The next day we had another ball at the same time and place, and I noticed we were back at Donner Lake.

It was then that I realized that every night at ten o’clock, we will go back to Donner Lake. So, for all of you kids out there, if you are brave enough to go to Donner Lake at 10:00 P.M., you might see us laughing and dancing still to this day.