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Projects - Ghost Town (2014-2016)


Back and Forth	Red Rock Rhondo

by Phillip Bimstein

Back and Forth (A Ghost Story)
In 1866, just a few short years after Marvelous Flood Tenney was born, two girls (Loretta Russell and Elizabeth Woodbury) died on a swing in a tragic accident in Grafton, Utah (a remote town once used as a hideaway by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), when the log that held up their swing fell on them. The two long-haired girls were buried together in long white dresses. Sixty years later, a 12-year-old girl named Vilo Demille was playing “run sheepie run,” a variant of “hide and seek.” She shut her eyes while the other kids ran to hide. When she opened them again she saw two pale girls in long white dresses, hair clear down to their waist, run through the fence and disappear. Ninety years old when she told this story, Vilo said she “swears to this day” that the girls she saw “were the ghosts of those two girls who died on that swing.” The girls’ tombstone still stands in the old Grafton cemetery. Grafton is now a ghost town.

vocals Phillip Bimstein, Kate MacLeod • violin Flavia Cervino-Wood
• English horn Charlotte Bell • mandocello Hal Cannon
• guitar Phillip Bimstein • bass Harold Carr