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Parallel universes? Ever feel like the next card would be “the one?”

By Milo Dailey

As a Deadwood-based living historian portraying Deadwood characters Wild Bill Hickock and Seth Bullock, David Soma believes that somehow it's only proper to try to get so into character that he knows the men themselves.

Wild Bill was no Mason, but there are some interesting ties to Bullock beyond the flowing moustaches both wore. Bullock's arrival in Deadwood and work as a lawman tamed much of the violence there. Hickock himself came to town as a somewhat less-wild Bill than in his younger days. His last killing had been the accidental death of a friend and fellow lawman. Biographers note it was his last.

When Soma decided to really get into the Wild Bill character after an odd experience with a paranormal investigator, he spent the night at Hickock’s grave at the Freemason-designed Mount Moriah.

He’s convinced that somehow, some way, he spoke with the frontiersman. Whether it was a ghost in traditional terms, a dream inspired by his nap at the grave or a meeting of parallel universes, Soma’s not so certain.

His wife, Kathleen Lane, leads “ghost” tours at the Historic Bullock Hotel. She said she feels “something” especially strong somewhere around the Oyster Bay and the Bullock. She’s not certain it’s ghosts in a traditional sense that bring spirit writing and “a vibrating nothing” that she and many of the tourists who take the tour feel.

In fact, Lane has a special way of showing she’s caught more than a little bit of the magnetism in the area. Standing in the bar at the back of the Bullock as Soma watches with a grin, Lane will tell you to raise a finger. She raises a finger perhaps four inches away, then moves it slowly from right to left. With eyes open or closed, the movement literally can be felt.

It’s part of what she calls that “vibrating nothing.”

Then she draws figures that resemble a capitol letter “A” with the crossbar extended and dropped down to the bottom of the letter’s legs. Then she draws three more or less vertical lines that don’t converge.

“This is what we are getting upstairs in a mirror,” she said, adding that in the area there is a feeling that “everything is in a state of flux.”
It’s as if, she said, “I’m seeing ‘A’s,’ and ‘W’s’ and ‘M’s’.”

A drawing of a Freemason’s lodgeroom with Devils Tower at the west, Bear Butte to the east and Mount Moriah as the southern seating positions for the top lodge officers brought immediate recognition.

And, she said, it makes sense with what she has found in Deadwood.

“The earth’s magnetic field has declined over the past 1,000 years,” Lane said, “But this is a place of extremely high magnetic charge.”
That, she said, “opens up the brain.”

Gaming in Deadwood may have some of the same type of cards and the same sort of machines found elsewhere in the world, but some sensitive players feel that there’s something different in how their intuition works while placing their bets.

Soma, who portrays Wild Bill, has noted that Bill wrote his new wife back East that somehow he felt Deadwood was his last stop. There’s gold underground at Deadwood; it’s among the best conductors of electromagnetism – so good it’s used in quality computer boards.

Add two antennae of Devils Tower to the west and Bear Butte to the east to the equation and Lane’s feelings of “something” may simply be sensitivity to electromagnetic swirls around the Northern Hills gulch communities.

Lane can carry on with possible explanations of what’s happening – but really gets into the program when some of the newest theories in physics are brought up.

Once the stuff of science fiction, many physicists today are convinced there is evidence that there isn’t just one universe, but an infinite number of universes that may be bubbles or membranes that are invisible but just a … vibration away. 

Are the ghosts in Deadwood really ghosts?

Or, are they people partly visible in another universe made partly visible by the magnetic vibrations unique to Deadwood?