During the day the quarry remains still and peaceful; at night wind lifts whispers from the past. Ax picks hitting Brownstone and distant cries from a steam engine’s whistle are heard from the depths below. Some say its men still working, unable to leave the job unfinished . Others says its men looking for revenge for what was taken from them.
It was 1938, rumors of an incoming storm reached Stanclift the owner of Brownstone quarry. The quarry treated Stanclift and thousands of immigrant workers well throughout the years. The work was hard but there was plenty of it and the men did it with honor. Demand for Brownstone assured the men their families would be well cared for. They developed a small village within the walls of the quarry with a foundry to re-sharpen their picks and axes from the day’s abuse, a galley with a cook on site 24 hours a day where the food wasn’t good but it was quick letting them return to work sooner and an infirmary for the most tragic of accidents.
But something out of Stanclift’s control was about to end it for all of them, a hurricane. The winds picked up and the river swelled with the threat of an incoming storm. They had seen it before; smaller storms filling the quarry and stopping work for weeks. This time the men were not willing to stop, not willing to let this storm change everything for them. Stanclift watched from the top as the men worked the quarry below. Blinded by rain and barely able to move against the wind, they slowly lifted Brownstone rock from the quarry and into the steam engine train that carried it up and out to the river. Suddenly, behind him Stanclift heard a thunderous roar as water broke from the river rushing over the banks and filling the quarry. Some men watched from above as the deep quarry hole filled with water burying everything and everyone in its path. As quickly as the hurricane came, it was gone. Women and children rushed from their homes searching for their loved ones. They stood staring at the devastation, each of them in their own thoughts, some lost in those thoughts forever.
Locals say at night, when the winds blow across the quarry you can hear the spirits and when the fog settles down over the water you can see them. Not realizing they are dead, some try desperately to finish the work they never completed while others search for loved ones. The most dangerous, the spirits that died at the hand of the quarry that fateful night. They’re the ones to watch out for.
