For the pioneers on the Oregon Trail, a typical day started before dawn with breakfast of coffee, bacon, and dry bread. Wagons were repacked, bedding was secured and the train of wagons was soon on its way again, usually covering 15 miles or more by five in the afternoon.

At about that time, the wagons were circled for the evening. Men secured the animals and made repairs while women cooked a hot meal of tea and boiled rice with dried beef or codfish.

After dinner, folks with children did some schooling, while others sang a bit and maybe even danced around the campfire. Inevitably, someone would start to reminisce about the home they had left behind or reflect on the day's events, and pretty soon the storytelling would begin...

There were perils aplenty along the Oregon Trail. Nearly one in ten who set off on the journey did not survive. Many other would-be immigrants were forced to turn back.

The stories told around the campfire, especially after the young ones were abed, often concerned terrors both real and imagined. They told of thunderstorms with hailstones the size of a man's fist, about lightning that pounded the earth relentlessly and drove oxen into paroxysms of fear, of tornadoes and ferocious winds that carried hapless travelers to their deaths. 

There were, of course, stories about Indian attacks and massacres, buffalo stampedes and flash floods and rattlesnake bites and failed river crossings. But the most deadly threat along the trail was cholera, the "unseen destroyer," which could take a hold of a person in good spirits one morning and have him in agony by noon and dead by evening.

Not surprisingly, it was often the stories about the supernatural, ghosts and apparitions and unexplained phenomena that scared folks the most, and which they asked to hear again and again...