Have you heard of the Ghost of Packsaddle Gap?
The story involves trainmen on the Pennsylvania Railroad Co.'s Pittsburgh Division who reported seeing a mysterious white man, Tom Skelton, who steps in the path of trains during the night while the trains pass through Packsaddle Gap. The mysterious man supposedly is searching for his intended bride, whom he shot and killed after mistaking her for a deer while hunting in Packsaddle Gap.
That story was written down in 1851 by Frank Cowan of Greensburg, who was a physician, writer, and personal secretary to President Andrew Johnson.
Cowan related that when Pennsylvania Railroad trains rounded a curve as they ran through the gap near Chestnut Ridge the locomotive headlight picked up the image of an old man who stepped onto the tracks. He would lean on his long gun and stare at the mountainside "through the gloom of the approaching night, and see not the headlight, until — Horrible! Horrible! The old man is ground beneath the wheels," Cowan wrote.
"Thrice already the train has stopped at this point. And thrice the engineer has descended from the train, and with a sickening heart walked back the tracks in expectation of finding the mangled remains of an old man lying on the track or on the side of the mountain along which the railroad had been cut or a hundred feet below on the bank of the river where he might have been hurled.
`But the light of the lantern has not revealed to the engineer any sign of the mangled body of Wild Tom Skelton, the weird old man that haunts the Packsaddle Gap." Cowan wrote.
Cowan's work has been reprinted through the years, although it is not known what form his original took — whether it was a letter, an account in a newspaper, or some other type of text.
A cliff on the Indiana County side of the mountain has a stone outcropping that appears to be the head of a man overlooking the river. Cowan wrote that the stone face was exposed by a landslide caused by a lightning strike while Tom Skelton was on his way to tell Donald McDowell of the tragic hunting accident in which he accidentally shot and killed McDowell's only daughter, Maria, mistakenly for a deer. Skelton sometimes referred to his fiancee, as "New Moon."
However McDowell, his blind and ill wife, and his cabin were pushed off the hillside and into the river by the landslide that same day and all were supposedly washed away.
The cliff side "face" remained after the landslide, and Skelton was quoted as saying it was the face of McDowell. No one ever knew what happened to old Tom Skelton. did he live out his days roaming the gap living with his guilt to a ripe old age as the story suggests? or did he perish quickly after the incident, be it by his own hand or that of a venomous predator? Or did another accident befall him as had his beloved Maria. Perhaps we will never know for sure.
It was rumored that a ghost occasionally spooked the mules towing boats in the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, which passed through Packsaddle Gap. Was that Tom Skelton, too?
Now adding to the mystery is the following information:
During the 1970s, a large stone was excavated during track construction along the Penn View Mountain Railroad about a mile west of the stone face in Packsaddle Gap. This stone bears the raised outline of two moccasin prints.
Could it be that the stone face is that of Tom Skelton and not Donald McDowell ?and could it be that Skelton had wandered around Oaks Point while looking for his slain lover and left his footprints forever in stone?
The stone footprint images were observed by someone riding the PVM train in 1978. He walked back to view the stone close up, then photographed the footprints. So take a seat in Packsaddle Gap some evening, Above the sounds of the river rushing and the call of a hawk or the snort of a deer, you might hear the bark of a fox, or you might hear Tom Skelton's voice calling "Maria, Maria" or "New Moon, New Moon," as he called his love.
So do you feel brave enough to retrace Toms steps or will you run in fear? The choice is yours to make. this journey and the path you take to Lovers Leap rocks will be all up to you once you reach the ruins of the old hunting cabin. venomous snakes are numerous in the area so take your time and be careful. The rocks that make up Lovers Leap are an oddity of nature because of the shear will they have to stay clinging to each other. as you can see from the images attached very little has changed in the 100 plus years between photos. Enjoy the adventure as you look for a plastic ammo can in the void of an oak tree within 30 feet of the rocks. Please don't go digging in rocks here as you may end up the next ghost that haunts these hills.