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Does the Ghost of Mark Twain
Walk Carson City, Nevada?
by Richard Senate
FATE :: July 2007

The wind came up suddenly and unexpectedly that afternoon. It had been warm and sunny in Carson City, Nevada, but in this city on the edge of the mighty Sierra Nevada range the weather can change abruptly. I didn’t know if the cold wind was some sort of omen. My car glided slowly past the rows of tombstones and monuments at the Lone Mountain Cemetery  until I saw a landmark that would guide me to a haunted gravestone linked to one of America’s greatest writers. It was the statue of a Civil War soldier on a high pillar, a monument to all those who lost their lives in the tragic American Civil War. The haunted grave was nearby, according to a map I had procured.

I parked the car and got out, armed with my camera and map. The wind whipped all around me, kicking up dust and sending a sudden chill through my frame. The wind off the snow-covered peaks was frigid, even in the bright sunlight. Still, the place had the feeling of a graveyard; quiet, serene, and respectful. I felt there was something else here where so many were buried. It was a feeling of unfinished tasks and tragedy. Then, I saw it: the simple stone that marked the final resting place of a nine-year-old girl.

Tragedy always leaves a psychic scar upon a site, and there is nothing so heart­rending as the death of a beloved child. Maybe that’s why visitors tell of seeing shadows here of a young girl in a pink dress.

The grave is that of Jennie Clemens, the only child of Orion and Mollie Clemens, and the niece of Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. She passed away 1864 after a long illness that kept her bedridden. Sam, then a reporter for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, spent many hours with the girl telling yarns and laughing at the silliness of the world. She was very close to the gruff writer who was more at home in a saloon than among polite society.

As I stood beside the small grave I wondered if this was the very spot Sam Clemens stood on that painful day when the child was placed within the hard soil of Carson City, Nevada. Did he water the grave with his tears? Perhaps. He loved the girl so much that he would name his own daughter Jennie and yes, weep when she too passed over at a young age. I took a picture of the stone and moved on, feeling like an intruder. The investigation wasn’t over and there was still daylight to visit another scene in this haunting drama.....

Read the rest of this article in the July 2007 issue of FATE

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