See You Later, Alligator

"I needed a new machete," I told Paul as we walked through Wal-Mart. "Can't find the old one; I don't know what happened to it. I figure buying a new one is the quickest way to find it."

"It'll show up tomorrow," agreed Paul.

"If I find it, you can have the old one."

"Really?"

"Sure. Is it irresponsible parenting to let my nine-year-old have his own machete?"
"No," said my nine-year-old.

I grabbed a seven-dollar machete off the shelf. Paul said,"What's this thing you're going to tonight?"

"Tomorrow, not tonight. I got no plans for tonight. Tomorrow I have the trivia fundraiser for the shelter. It's in McElhattan."

"Oh. Okay."

"It's at Henry Shoemaker's house, which is a winery these days. They're holding this for us as a fundraiser---I'll be the guy asking all the local history questions. Shoemaker is the guy who wrote all those ghost legends down; his place is probably haunted."

"Cool," said Paul. "I wish I could go."

"Can't take you to a winery, kiddo," I said. "You and me will do something special for your birthday."

I walked around the old house, checking my EMF detector. I didn't get too much, but I didn't want to spend too much time outside checking, either. I was needed in the winery area.

I walked inside, where a couple of other people from the shelter were waiting for me. Tara said,"Find anything?"

"Not this time. How'd you know I was checking for ghosts?"

"I know you."

"We only had one team register," said Carrie. "They win by default. They're okay with not competing, but they wanted to know if you could give them a talk about Henry Shoemaker, since we're on his property."

"Oh sure," I said. "I can do that."

"Just out of the blue like that? Are you sure?"
"Not my first rodeo," I said.

"How did it go?" my wife asked when I walked back in the door.

"Only one team, but we still wound up making about eighty bucks," I said. "I gave a speech on Henry Shoemaker. Where's the kid?"

"Out back, playing with his friends."

"I brought you a bottle of wine," I said.

I handed it to her, and she looked it over. "This looks good. We'll have to try it later."

I walked into the kitchen and dropped my pack onto a chair. I sat down and opened my laptop. It wasn't too likely I'd get an emergency message from the shelter, considering I'd just met with some of them, but I figured I'd better check. I checked my e-mail, and then looked over the rest of my messages. There was one about a speech in Renovo on Friday.

I walked back to Michelle. "What's your schedule like Friday? I've been asked to go talk to a kids' class in Renovo."

"I can get home to be with Paul."

"Okay." I went back to my messages. And I found a good one.

I went out back, where Paul was bouncing on the trampoline with a couple of his friends. They taken the garden hose to make it wet and slippery, because it wasn't already unsafe enough. I called the kid over to the edge.

"You're home!" he said.

"Just got in. Listen, little man, got big news."

"What?"

"Fifteen years ago, I worked on a project. It had to do with a Civil War submarine that sank in 1863. This was called the Alligator. There was a prototype model, smaller, that sank in New Jersey, and people have been looking for that, too. They may have found it."

"And you helped find it?"

"I helped."
"You can't even find my machete."

"I did some of the research that helped with this. My old friend Alice contacted me. They found some sort of big metal thing in the right river, and they're trying to raise money to get the equipment to find out more. It might be the Alligator Junior, and I helped with the research on that."

"Cool."

"Here's the thing---The guy who designed this thing, Brutus Devilleroi, lived here in Clinton County for a while. When I worked on this project, the government was convinced he made his money here. He lived up near Kettle Creek for a year and a half, and there's no record of him owning any businesses. When I looked into this fifteen years ago, I came up with the theory that he may have discovered a lost silver mine up there---There's documentation that there might be one. And now, they may have found the Alligator Junior, and my research went into that." I grinned. "And that, kid, means that we're involved."

I got into work in the afternoon, and checked my e-mail. I finished up a research job involving an article from 1940. I tried processing books. But no matter what I did, my mind was already pretty much up in Noyes Township with the lost silver. Finally I gave up pretending, and started working on that a bit.

I refreshed my memory on some of the stuff I'd dug up fifteen years ago. I started by checking Linn's History to confirm the silver, and I found that without too much trouble. There was a long paragraph about a man who'd seen the Native Americans up in the north end of the county canoeing down the Susquehanna with packs full of silver that they'd pulled from someplace. He'd searched for it throughout a couple of townships, but never found it.

I had a memory of Devilleroi living in what was now Westport, right where Kettle Creek met the Susquehanna River. The 1862 map confirmed that one; he'd been staying at a place owned by Colonel A.C. Noyes, and I was able to locate Noyes's place easily enough, right where I remembered.

Then I laid out an old warrant map on the table in the PA Room and started studying it to chart out where Devilleroi had owned. That's what I was doing when Chris came in.

"Hi, Lou. What's up?"

I looked up from the map. "I'm reopening the USS Alligator."

Chris is one of the few people I can open a conversation with in that way. "Really? What's it been, ten years?"

"Fifteen. I was called in on the Alligator in 2009. But there's news---They may have found the Alligator Junior."

"Was it off the coast of North Carolina?"

"That's the big one. This one was the little prototype, and they've detected a mass of metal in the correct river in New Jersey. They're raising money to study it further, and this brings back the question of the lost silver."
"You proved that, didn't you?"

"Fifteen years ago, I studied the land Devilleroi owned, and realized it was the same place where there were legends of a lost silver mine. The silver has actually been documented in Linn's, so it's not like it's just a rumor. Devilleroi was supposed to be lumbering the area, but there's no real record of him actually doing that. The government is convinced that he made the money here in Clinton County, so I came up with the theory that he may have found the silver."

"What minerals would form with silver?" Chris asked.

"Quartz, for one. Silver tends to piggyback on other minerals, so sometimes if you find quartz, you'll find silver."

"Is there quartz up in Noyes Township?"

I grinned.

"That's what I'll have to find out."

At the end of my shift, with nothing better to do, I decided to do a deep dive into the possibility of silver in Clinton County. I'm not a geologist, and only have a basic understanding of the principles, but I am one hell of a good local researcher. So I went to the index.

I found more than I expected. Looking up "silver" in the index gave me a lot of newspaper articles over the years. Some of them, I was able to dismiss as being too far away geographically for my purposes. I copied down the date of the earliest I could find----1871---As closest to Devilleroi's time. I got the microfilm and rolled it to the date.

It was about finding silver in Beech Creek Township and Centre County, which wasn't where I needed to be. But I was encouraged---It was possible to find silver.

The next one I looked at was from 1936, and more comprehensive than the first. It involved silver in several possible areas, including Elk and Potter Counties. I checked the map--Elk and Potter were both reasonably close to the area I needed. If there were reliable deposits in Elk and Potter, it was a reasonable guess that there might be traces in northern Clinton, too. 

So my target area, extrapolating off this article, was both Keating Townships, plus Leidy, Noyes, and possibly Chapman. And I wasn't getting there very soon to do a full-scale exploration---But in the near future, I was getting there.

The after-school program was in a church in downtown Renovo. I went in, and the instructor, Donna, gave me a hug. "Did the driver find your place okay?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Everything went smooth." Shockingly, I am at the point in my career where sometimes they'll send a vehicle to pick me up.

"Thanks for doing this," she said. "It's National Paranormal Day, and I thought you'd be a good program for today. The kids are all excited."

"Glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me."

I set down my bag, and the adults organized the kids and got them sitting down and passably quiet. The kids all seemed to be around six to eight years old. I stood in front of the bunch. "Hi, guys. Today is National Paranormal Day, and I'm a paranormal investigator. Does anyone know what 'paranormal' means?"

Hands went up. "It means ghosts." "Something you don't understand." "Stuff that's weird."

"All technically correct," I said. "Paranormal means things that we can't explain yet, like ghosts. I brought some equipment to show you, and my ghost-hunting outfit. You want to see my ghost-hunting outfit?"

Cheers. I was already wearing my uniform, so I dug into my bag and pulled out the vest. I put it on. One of the kids asked,"Isn't that heavy?"

"Kind of, yeah. You should see my other one. But you get used to it. Oh, can't forget the gloves."

I pulled out the gloves---I'd forgotten that with this vest, I'd brought the fingerless armored kind instead of the usual ones with the skulls on them. One of the kids asked,"If you hit a ghost with those gloves, would it hurt?"

"Would hitting really be the best way for the ghost and me to solve our problems?" I did a quick spin and showed off the vest. "It carries all my equipment, like this---Here's an EMF detector."

Excited chatter from the kids. They'd seen one of these before someplace. I demonstrated the detector, and the laser thermometer, and played them back an EVP. Passed around some of the equipment and let them take a turn checking it out.

The kids were clearly having a good time with all of this. I showed them how to make trigger objects and set them up. Then, while they were distracted, I slipped out for a moment.

Renovo is in Chapman Township, right by the border of Noyes. So it's pretty much centrally located to the northern part of Clinton County, which, geologically, is convenient. I walked south, heading for the river. In Lock Haven, the river is always north of you. In Renovo, it's south.

I thought about the last time I'd worked on the USS Alligator. It had been the winter of 2009, and I'd been called in by the NOAA to research. I'd been working for a local museum then, with a somewhat tyrannical boss and a teenaged assistant. Paul wasn't born yet, and Chris was still a couple of years away from showing up and becoming my best friend. LHPS had only formed a few months previously. 

I'd pulled all of the files from the courthouse, deeds, legal papers. For a while, I'd deepened the mystery, until I'd come up with the realization that Devilleroi had owned the same land as the stories of lost silver. I'd actually hiked up into the forests in the north part of the county to search for it, and found a couple of caves that showed some potential. I'd wound up getting mentioned on a national radio show on NPR for this stunt, which had been my first time on NPR but not the last.

Fifteen years ago.

I was conveniently already in my outfit. I walked across Huron Avenue, the main road through Renovo. Nothing to see here; just a guy in a military-grade tactical vest taking a walk across town. Renovo isn't that big; in a minute I was at the river.

I climbed down the bank. On a geological level, to test, the Susquehanna would probably be the least disturbed place, at least for my purposes. I got out a piece of litmus paper and tested the water, which turned out to be very mildly acidic. I poked around in the dirt, coming up with a few handfuls of dirt and stones. I sifted through, looking for something that wasn't just generic rock.

People are under the assumption that paranormal investigation is just going out and doing some exciting sitting around while the ghosts arrive. Television has a lot to answer for. To really be doing it right, you need at least a basic understanding of biology, chemistry, history...and geology.

After a little while, I found a white, sparkly stone. Quartz. I tucked it in my pocket, then climbed up the bank and headed back.

I slipped back into the room, where the kids were setting up their trigger objects. I said,"If you check these on Monday, you never know, they may have moved. You might have found something."

"Thanks for doing this, Lou," said Donna. "The kids are having a great time."
"Glad to help," I said.

 I sat in my office, digging through my old files. I'd been piling up folders full of information since 2006, and I'd had most of them organized into a box upstairs. I found the Alligator file from fifteen years ago and looked it over.

I was going to need to do more digging; add some documentation to it. This file had been compiled by a much younger guy, far less experienced. I'd done the best I could with it at the time, but I was fifteen years more experienced by now. Reopening the file again this summer, I could do better.

Paul came up the stairs. "Mom says it's almost bedtime, Daddy."

"Okay. I'll take the dogs out before bed. You remember the submarine job, with the lost silver?"

"Yeah."
"I took a few samples today. I found quartz and acid. That means it's possible there's actually some silver up there."

"Cool! Are we going to look for it?"
"Over the summer, yeah, I think we are. Maybe when I go up to do my annual talk at Hyner this year."

"Fun."

I walked out into the hallway. "See this poster, kiddo?"

Paul looked at the USS Alligator poster I'd had hanging in the hall for his entire life. "Yeah, I know that one."

"I got this during the last round of research. It's actually about all I got paid for that job. I made a lot of progress on this last time I looked into it. This summer, we're gonna do it again."

"Cool!"
I smiled. "Get to bed, kiddo. I'll be right with you."