Halloween is five days away, and we recently learned HBO is bringing back a new batch of “Deadwood” television shows, following up the 2004 series.

Then there’s this Deadwood-based Black Hills Paranormal Investigations ghost-hunting thing that pops up each year about Halloween time. They even re-enact the shooting of Wild Bill.

So let’s tie together Halloween’s witches and the Deadwood ghost-hunting paranormals and Wild Bill.  

I read an unusual story about him in an old Deadwood newspaper while I was researching for a book I’m working on.  

Wild Bill was shot in Deadwood’s Saloon #10 on Thursday night, Aug. 2, 1876.  

Three years after his death and burial in a non-descript cemetery, friends dug him up and reburied him in Deadwood’s then new Mount Moriah Cemetery.

The newspaper’s description of Bill’s exhumed body seems to defy logic and science. It sounded to me like his old buddies were not exactly reliable sources. 

First, they were digging him up early on a Sunday.

Second, their digging was three years to the day after they buried him in 1876.   

Third, digging started at 4 a.m., and in Deadwood 140 years ago, its more than 40 saloons never closed, especially on Saturday nights or Sunday mornings. 

Fourth, why did the diggers find it necessary to open the casket?

I figure the time of the digging could have been just an extension of a long night in the city’s smoky watering holes during which Wild Bill’s memory was much discussed over slugs of what in those days they called bunch, white mule and stagger foot at 25 cents a pop.

For your own conclusion, read the following 1879 news report of that exhumation:

“As previously announced in these columns,” the Deadwood reporter wrote, “Wild Bill’s remains were exhumed and re-interred in Mount Moriah Cemetery on Sunday last. 

“From the information we have derived of the removal, we are indebted to Mr. Lewis Schoenfield, an old-time acquaintance of Bill’s, and in whose memory Bill’s many enduring qualities are still bright and green. 

“Colorado Charley, a partner of Bill’s at the time of his death, has purchased a lot in the new cemetery and at his own expense procured a fitting monument of Italian marble that is now daily expected which will be raised over the new resting place as soon as it arrives. 

“At 4 o’clock Sunday morning the body was uncovered and at 9 o’clock it was taken out of the grave. The body at interment weighed about 180 pounds, but upon removal it weighed not less than 300 pounds. There was no odor and no perceptible decay and it is supposed by those who examined it that petrification had taken place as it was hard as wood, and returned the same sound as a log when struck with a stick. 

“Everything in the coffin was found just as it was placed there, and the rumor of the grave having been rifled is all bosh. The only article buried with the body was a carbine, and that was in as good a state of preservation as ever. There was no knife and revolvers buried with him as reported, and those who should know say that he never owned a pistol in the Hills.

“His hair was as glossy and as silky as when in life and a lock of it is now in possession of William Learned, musical director of the Gem Theatre. 

“His moustache was hard and seemed, like his body, to have been petrified. 

“And thus endeth the third and last chapter in the life of this truly remarkable man whose true friends, and he seems to have many of them, still cherish his memory, although three years have rolled past into eternity since they laid him in the tomb.”    

Happy Halloween.

If you’d like to comment, email the author at cfcecil@swiftel.net.