The Legend of Rackson’s Cursed Gold

I was taking a morning break at one of my favorite spots, sipping coffee on the terrace while the rising sun crept across the hillside. At certain times of the year, the warming air stirred up a cool, flower-scented breeze from the creek below. I was waiting for that fleeting but unforgettable, heavy blend of mountain air, wildflowers, and pine aromas to come wafting up. I timed my morning around it as often as I could.

My morning was interrupted by Millie Drake scrambling across the creek, heading back toward town. Millie sometimes talked to herself loudly and said things that made people uncomfortable. She wasn’t crazy, Millie just had no filter. She might blurt out, “What ugly shoes!” or “That’s a dumb haircut!” and then laugh, sometimes adding odd remarks that made no sense to anyone but her. Most folks avoided her, though she was generally cheerful and polite.

That morning, something was wrong. Her hair was a mess, her hands were covered in dirt, and the hem of her dress was torn. I think she was trying to slip back into town unnoticed, wanting to be left alone. Still, I decided to mention it to my friend, retired Deputy Sheriff Mild Bill Hickok. He was late for coffee that morning, which usually meant something was up.

It had been an interesting week. Old Deadwood was stirring again. I had recently written a news article about the discovery of old bones, an old gold coin, and a related tragic death. I was most interested to see what else the Sheriff’s department had found out.

Mysterious Old Bones and a Gold Coin Unearthed Outside of Deadwood
Deadwood, SD: A local man, while digging a basement on the outskirts of town, made a chilling discovery: human bones. The partially burnt bones were hiding a one-ounce blank gold coin with curious crimson stains.

Jerry Bridgman from the Deadwood Historic Society weighed in, “The site appears to date back to the early Deadwood Gold Rush days. Archaeologists have been called in to examine the remains. They will determine the age and, if possible, use genetic testing to identify the individual. Experts will also examine the gold coin for clues to its origin.

Tragically, the man died that same evening in a hit-and-run motorcycle accident. The name is being withheld pending family notification.

Mild Bill Hickok had been called to the old Number 10 Saloon where his namesake, his forth great uncle, Wild Bill Hickok, had been murdered 150 years ago. He called me from there. “Get on down to the Number 10 and bring your camera. You’re gonna want to see this; some guy fixing the foundation found a little wooden box with gold coins. Unmarked, one-ounce coins with crimson red spots like that other one found last week.”

I hustled down and walked in, finding Bill with a group of law officers gathered around a poker table. His back was towards me, a big mistake that I would rib him about later. If your name is Bill Hickok, Wild or Mild, you don’t sit or stand with your back to the door while inside the Number 10 Saloon!

On the poker table sat a small wooden box that held ten gold coins, blank gold coins with the same weird crimson red spots as the one found last week. With six empty spaces, it was easy to tell that the box held more coins than were in there now.

“Where are the other six coins?” I asked, trying to sound intelligent.

Mild Bill told me the saloon owners had wasted no time claiming the gold, immediately pocketing two of the coins for themselves. They grudgingly allowed the remaining ten coins to be examined by the authorities but claimed ownership because they were found on their property.

“So there are four missing coins… Have you asked the crew who found the box?” I was still catching up as they were already on the trail, and it was only minutes later, Bill got a report that they found a construction worker slumped dead in his vehicle, drenched in blood, and his boss was nowhere to be found!

The Sheriff’s department put out an alert, and they had located him within the hour. A gun battle quickly ensued, leaving a police officer dead, a bystander wounded, and the suspect shot down. When they searched him, they found three of the gold coins in his pocket. The murdered worker had none.

Later that afternoon, once the chaos settled, I caught up with Bill again. “That still leaves one missing coin,” he said. “And now the Number 10’s bar manager is MIA. They’ve issued an APB for her.”

Mild Bill leaned in and quietly told me, “And unless these coins can move on their own, we have a thief in the Sheriff’s Office. That gold coin from the basement dig, disappeared last night. That’s NOT for publication!” he emphasized!

We speculated about the thief. They’d have to be exceptionally good to steal from the Sheriff’s vault.

Staring out over his coffee, Mild Bill said, “Not to be dramatic, but this Deadwood gold is cursed as hell. Three dead civilians, one wounded, and a dead cop. Add to that the missing bar manager and at least one cursed gold coin still on the loose. This thing’s got a body count. You watch, more people are going to die before it’s over.”

Mild Bill was right, this was old cursed gold, and it was gathering momentum; tragedy struck again that night. A fire broke out at the Number 10 Saloon owner’s house. One of the owners was dead, and the other badly burned.

The house fire was still smoldering when Bill and I met the following morning. Bill quietly confirmed that the owner’s wall safe, presumably holding the two gold coins, was open and empty. They had no answers yet, only questions.

Then, almost casually, he added, “Last night, the ten coins from the Number 10 disappeared from inside the Sheriff’s vault.”

“Oh my!” I was surprised.

Bill continued, “And the three coins recovered from the construction workers, and the first one from the basement dig. All gone.”

“The Sheriff’s Department lost 14 historic gold coins? I asked incredulously.

Bill silently nodded. “And that’s not all, last night the missing bar manager turned up dead in Las Vegas. Mugged and murdered. No coin, of course. Easy enough to read the clues though. She likely made some kind of hush deal with the construction workers, took the coin, and now the curse pulled in another murdering thief because, that’s what it does.”

An ambulance sped by with its lights flashing. That’s when I remembered Millie. “I saw Millie Drake down along the creek yesterday morning. Has she been in any of your reports? She looked a little frazzled and like she was sneaking back to town.”

“Oh?” Bill asked, looking directly at me, his forehead wrinkled up. “You know, I think we ought to go check on her. You got time right now?” Mild Bill Hickok knew the people. He had a knack for finding eerie things, especially in Deadwood. I was happy to go along.

We knocked, but Millie didn’t answer, even though we could hear her talking inside. Bill pushed on the door, which creaked open without much resistance. She was sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands and several stacks of the same cursed coins were in front of her!

“I have to get rid of them.” Millie’s voice was tired. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Her hair was wild, her clothes dirty, and she had not bathed. This was not the Millie Drake we knew. She might have talked to herself, but not like this.

“I have to get rid of them,” she muttered again, shaking her head. Her hands were trembling. “But now there’s more. There’s too many. And they keep coming back! They’re cursed and now I’m cursed.”

Mild Bill asked if she needed to go to the emergency room, but she wagged her whole body back and forth; No. Her dark, sunken eyes were staring forward, but it was obvious she was not seeing anything except maybe the inside of her head.

Suddenly she blurted, “My great-great-grandfather was Alfred Rackson!”

Mild Bill’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Wait, Rackson? As in Rackson’s Cursed Gold?”

She slightly nodded, breathlessly whispering, “It’s the dark family secret.”

Now I knew why Millie talked to herself. Because, deep down, she knew no one would understand the burden she carried. The weight of her family history. The secret they were forced to quietly pass down.

Bill sat back heavily on the kitchen chair. “Well that explains a lot. We’ve heard of it of course, but as a legend, not an actual story that involved real people.” He recalled the story, “Some young man by the name of Rackson, begged to be blessed with gold that would keep coming back to him, over and over. He sacrificed everything he had for it. He had eternal wealth. That is until no one would take his gold anymore, and he died a rich man with nothing to eat and no place to sleep.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but I bet he could have gotten away with it nowadays!

Millie shook her body back and forth again. “That’s not the way it was. I don’t know everything, but I know the family stories. Alfred Rackson lived with the nightmares of killing Abel Fennis for his gold.” She stared off into space for several moments before continuing, “And now I have those visions and nightmares.”

She paused to catch her breath again. “His son, my great-grandfather, took him in. Alfred Rackson lived here in this house until he died at the age of 100. Great-grandpa changed the family name to Drake to keep the thieves away.”

Her voice got quieter again, “Last night I dreamt I was being pushed into a grave hole.” She shivered. “My dad told me that Alfred’s nightmares never stopped. He was twisted and shriveled up. There was almost nothing left of him when he died.”

Apart from occasional gasps for air, her voice was growing as shallow as her breathing, “The nightmares and visions are bad. They hurt me. I see the pain and rage. I feel Abel Fennis’ panic. I hear Alfred Rackson offer him a share of the gold if he’d tell him where it is. But Alfred Rackson had no mercy and sliced Abel Fennis’ neck open anyway. The screaming just stopped.”

“I see him bleed onto the floor and down into the floorboards, where Alfred Rackson found 35 gold coins that were splattered with Abel Fennis’ blood. He cut the dead man down and threw one of the bloody coins onto his body. ‘Here’s your share,’ he told him. Then he lit the cabin on fire and walked away.”

She was shivering, her voice was shaky and weak, but she kept talking like she needed to finally tell someone these things.

“I see Abel Fennis standing over me. He’s pale and his throat is split wide open. His eyes burn red with hate, and then his darkness overtakes me.”

Tears were streaming down her face, she gasped several short gasps in a row. “And there’s more…” She was struggling to speak. “The dead man’s mother, she’s crying and screaming at Rackson. ‘You took away more than we could lose.’ She’s cursing him, ‘You will never be able to spend the gold. It will haunt you with nightmares and visions of theft and murder, of death and fear until you finally welcome your own death! My whole family curses your family!‘

Millie, looking very panicked, got up for a moment but collapsed back into the chair again, holding her head in her hands. “I have to get rid of them. I need help.” She was rocking her body back and forth on the kitchen chair now.

“They never did tell me the whole story.” She was breathing more heavily now, visibly upset. Mild Bill calmly reassured her.

“Oh, I can’t believe I’m telling anybody this… I think the other coins are buried with him. I have to put these gold coins in Alfred’s grave without anyone knowing.” Millie desperately added, “I need help…” She paused for several moments, “He’s buried under the name ‘A. R. Johnson’, to keep the grave robbers away.”

Millie collapsed into her hands, it was obvious that it took everything she had to say that secret out loud. She was sobbing silently between her gasps.

Mild Bill assured her they would do that immediately, tonight. “I can get the cemetery’s groundskeeper to tent it off so no one sees what’s going on. We can put all the coins together with Rackson’s bones and bury all of this, once and for all.

That evening, with retired Deputy Sheriff Mild Bill Hickok and the groundskeeper’s help, we exhumed A.R. Johnson’s grave.

With a deep breath, we pried open the casket lid. Instead of a skeleton clutching a hoard of gold, there was only a single, withered finger bone and one gold coin with red spots, no skeleton and no cursed treasure.

Millie turned pale white. She looked broken like she had resigned from life, the expressions on her face were gone. “This is my curse now,” she said blankly. “I can’t let someone steal the gold and doom themselves and their family. I’m the last of the Rackson family. It has to end with me.”

Mild Bill put his hand on her shoulder and told her, “There might be a way around this yet.” Millie just shook her head.

Bill was speculating, “With this last coin, you have 18. If the visions showed 35 coins, then you already have more than half of them. We need to find the other 17 and bring them all together. They seem to be accumulating anyway. It’s possible the rest of the coins will turn up no matter what we do. Bringing them all together with Rackson’s finger bone might bring the curse to rest.”

“Or maybe putting all the coins together will bring him back again!” I reminded Mild Bill.

Bill and I camped out in my car in front of Millie’s house that night. Luckily nothing unusual happened. Very early the next morning, we saw Millie moving around in the house and went in to check on her.

Adding the coin from the casket to her growing cursed collection had only made things worse for Millie. She witnessed more terrible murders, things she couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about. She was staring off into space a lot that morning.

I suggested we bury the coins in a sealed container outside of her house. If they were still close enough, maybe they would at least stay off of the kitchen table.

Suddenly, Millie bolted upright. “The shed! The one out back! It was built over the old outhouse from when he lived here! I remember now, my grandfather teased me about it. I was told never to dig there. We weren’t even allowed to plant flowers back there.”

The three of us exchanged looks. Bill sharply inhaled. “I think you just found Alfred Rackson’s real grave.” None of us spoke. It felt dark and spooky to think he had been here all along. Was he listening?

The shed was wedged tightly into the ground. We had to pry it loose and tip it over to get underneath. Digging in shifts, it took Bill and I two hours until we found a rusty, barrel-shaped container, sealed tight. We were pretty sure we had found him when Millie came out of the house saying she had felt something change right then.

We cut the lid off to reveal a mass of twisted bones and cursed coins scattered at the bottom of the makeshift casket. Rackson’s skull was staring straight at me like it was waiting for someone. I couldn’t help but jump a little, it made my backbone shiver.

Mild Bill chuckled at me and just said, “Hello Alfred Rackson.”

We set out a table, separated the coins from the bones, and finally put all the coins together. I was actually expecting to see Rackson rise again. The bones shifted on the table, startling us, but luckily nothing more than that. The red stains on the gold became blood again, which turned to dust and disappeared. Everything seemed normal, normal for Deadwood anyway, although Millie didn’t think it was over. She still felt connected to the coins. She believed they were still cursed, and, as it turned out, they were.

A little bit of sleep over the next few days and nights showed the nightmares had stopped for Millie, even though she was still a mess. The ordeal had visibly aged her more than a few years. She wanted nothing to do with the coins, yet she wasn’t going to give them to someone else, not even a charity.

Less than a week later, while I was researching a Deadwood-Lead history story, I ran across a very old population registrar map. The map showed Millie’s house was originally owned by Fredrick D. Rackson, who later changed his name to just Fredrick Drake. Fredrick Drake married Abigail Fennis, and the date of Abigail’s birth suggested she was Abel Fennis’ younger sister. The implications were startling.

Millie was the great-great-granddaughter of the cursed murderer Alfred Rackson, and the great-great-niece of Abel Fennis, the man he murdered! I considered telling Millie, but later I decided to let Mild Bill tell her, after all, he has a way with this kind of weird stuff.

Mild Bill broke the news to Millie in his usual calm and mild voice. “Your ancestor, Abigail Drake, was the younger sister of Able Fennis. She took in Alfred Rackson and probably not out of pity. Seems like she made sure Rackson lived long enough to feel the full weight of the curse. No easy way out, no sudden death, just a long, miserable life.”

Millie suddenly looked angry, “So all this time… the curse wasn’t just supernatural? It was personal? It was about revenge?”

Suddenly finding her voice, “Imagine that! Great-great-grandmother Abigail was the family curse. I’m at the end of two very bad lineages of people.”

Sitting up, she added, “Well then, if it really was Abel Fennis’ gold, and if I’m already cursed, then maybe the gold coins really do belong to me now.”

Mild Bill watched her carefully, saying nothing. I wanted to rattle her cage and wake her up, but I kept my mouth shut too.

“I mean, think about it,” she continued. They were stolen from Abel Fennis. He died for them. My ancestor is the rightful owner, so that makes me the rightful owner now.”

She paused for what felt like several minutes of uncomfortable silence and then shook her whole body back and forth. The real Millie was back. “No. The gold belongs in the Black Hills. No one is safe if that gold keeps luring in thieves and killers. I need to melt those damned things into oblivion!”

Within a few days, Millie, Mild Bill, I, and a local goldsmith got together and witnessed the final act. Using a high-temperature metal kiln, they super-heated the coins to over 5,000 degrees, vaporizing them. The gold mist wafted into the breeze and drifted up and over the Black Hills.

Millie let out a slow breath.

Mild Bill studied her. “Feel any different?”

She turned sharply. No one was there.

Mild Bill caught her expression and chuckled. “Well, this probably set free a lot of ghosts we never even knew about.”

Millie stared into the hills where the gold had vanished. “Yeah, and one or two we did.”

Mild Bill Hickok always says, ‘Deadwood gold might promise eternal love, but it also carries its eternal grievances. That’s why we have so many ghosts out here.’

by Randy Peterson