Cecil Edward Denny, a young officer with the North West Mounted
Police in 1875, had enjoyed a morning of hunting in the foothills
of the Canadian Rockies, but by midday the weather had turned
threatening. As he set off to paddle downriver, Denny was overtaken
by hail and torrential rain, accompanied by violent thunder and
lightning, so he turned towards the river bank in search of a place
in which to shelter. Then, during a lull in the storm, he plainly
heard voices and drums beating. Relieved that he might find a
friendly Blackfoot camp nearby, he started through the forest
towards the sounds.
The storm worsened and Denny was glad to reach and open glade,
where he saw about 20 tepees, only 200 metres away. He was
surprised to see that people were moving about because Candian
Indians usually stayed bedhind closed tent flaps in wet
weather.
Suddenly a severe lightning flash threw the young man on his back
and split a nearby tree. It was a moment before he recovered
sufficiently to stand up. He turned towards the camp. but to his
astonishment and terror it had vanished! In the glade where he had
seen tepees in vivid detail, he now saw nothing but storm-tossed
trees.
Denny walked the 25km back to base, where his fellow officers
laughed at his story. Determined to solve the mystery, he took two
Indians back to the site. They told him that a Blackfoot tribe had
slaughtered a camp of Cree Indians there years before. A few stones
suggested an abandoned encampment and two bleached skulls lay in
the grass, but there was no evidence that the site had been
occupied recently. Had Danny's experience been a hallucination, or
the violent storm somehow triggered a flashback in time?
***end***
