EXCERPT FROM itsreddon.site 2020

i/hauntedcassan · Posted by u/macattack 2 years ago

Marten of the Mines experience

This is going to sound like a story I made up but I can prove it. A few years ago I was hiking around Cassan when I saw a pine marten on a backcountry trail. I was in the area taking pictures and didn't get a good shot but I chased it through the woods trying. I ran off trail like an idiot for almost a half hour when the marten dipped around a slope. When I got around the bend myself I was standing in the mouth of an abandoned mine. Scared me half to death. I heard the marten scurrying down deep into the tunnel. I posted some pictures around and people told me about the mines in Cassan and the urban legend but I'm kind of superstitious and didn’t feel great about the whole thing, so I just left it as a creepy story of when I almost got lost in the woods and died from going off trail.

When I told the story to one of my friends who is into urban exploration he got really excited and said that if we ever vacationed in Cassan that we should go looking for this mine and poke around. Long story short, we did, and guess what was there? The marten. It was staring in our direction from deep in the tunnel. We had our headlamps on and we were standing at the only source of light in the mine, so this is going to sound disprovable, but when this thing looked back at us, its eyes and whiskers looked like they were glowing bright yellow. I mean like, they looked like they were producing their own light. It would look for an eerily long time back at us, then walk a few feet deeper into the mineshaft, then repeat. Every movie about animals would tell you this thing was leading us into the mine, which is of course what my less superstitious friend thought. He convinced me to go into the mine just as long as the ground stayed level and walkable. 

My friend didn’t feel it as much as I did, but there was something very unpleasant about this mine. I'm not easily frightened by things like abandoned places or even caves, but this place was seriously unnerving. I felt that kind of fear that made it difficult to talk, which blindsided me and made me embarrassed to tell my enthusiastic friend. Of course, the deeper we went into the tunnel the worse it got for me. The light from the entrance faded quickly, and I got horrible ideas racing through my head about what was in this place with us. Eventually, we got a glimpse of the marten jumping into a downward hole, which is when I decided to tap out. My friend on the other hand noticed an iron ladder that lead down into this hole and saw what looked like a piece of paper clung to the foot of the last step. He insisted that he at least grab the paper and see what was written on it, so he carefully eased his way down to get it. Once he was down there, he had a look around and I just hear him say “Oh my god.” and dart back up the ladder after grabbing this sheet of paper. When he got to the top, his last push up off the ladder caused the rickety old screws to break off, which sent the ladder, and thankfully not my friend, sliding and clanging its way down the hole.

My friend explained that the bottom of the ladder landed on a platform above a huge open abyss that he couldn't see the bottom of. He said the light from his headlamp didn't even touch the other walls of the cave, just loads of random broken minecart rails that the marten must’ve tight roped across to get away. By the time he finished blurting all that out, we heard a distant sound, like a huge crash of metal coming from the hole. That's when he finally got as freaked out as I was and we sprint out of that mine. Looking back, I think it may have been the iron ladder landing at the bottom of the abyss, which is scary in and of itself when I think about the time it took for it to reach the ground. When we caught our breath, my friend pulled out the sheet of paper. It read:

" To Mr. Amon Colden "

" I am writing to inform you that the Northwest Entry division of the company will require substantially more supplies in order to accomplish the scale of prospecting in your previous order. This entry point is the farthest from our base of operations and as such, our crew currently has no alternative but to use our poorly supplied campsite in their off-hours as a means to remain close to the adjacent tunnels. If you desire this division to remain on schedule, I highly advise that you send us the necessary food, lodging, and medical supplies. Additionally, we have been awaiting payroll for over 15 days at the time of writing, and our miners are proportionately displeased considering the urgency at which they have been asked to bore deeper into the mountainside rather than extract ore from veins. I implore you to respond both to this letter and those sent previously. "

" Mr. Theodore Downes, Northwest Entry Foreman. January 6th, 1794 "

We brought this sheet of paper with us and did an old-fashioned local library database search. These names are real, but there isn’t anything written about this particular mine or the “Northwest Entry division”. It also references Amon Colden, who was one of two brothers who owned Colden Mining Co., as though he played a lead role in the company. But according to what we looked up, he acted mainly as a treasurer and it was his brother Beau who actually handled stuff like where mines were built and why. Does this constitute a secret? Like a hidden mining operation deep in the woods? I got it from following a glowing pine marten so you tell me.