Utah Macabre: Old Bishop

A native elder of the Utah Valley whose true name is now lost to time, only remembered as "Old Bishop" or "Bishop Whitney", was murdered by three Mormon settlers on or around August 1, 1849*.  It's unknown whether they ever bothered to learn his name, but they called him Old Bishop because they saw a resemblance in his being to Newel K. Whitney, the Presiding Bishop of the Church.  The murderers names, however, are remembered, recorded and here follow: Richard A. Ivie, J. Rufus Stoddard, and Gerome Zabriskie.  The exact events immediately preceding the murder cannot be known, but most commonly it is described as coming down to a dispute over a shirt worn by the native man.  Richard Ivie claimed it was his and that Old Bishop must have stolen it off the clothesline, but when Old Bishop refused to give up the shirt, Ivie and his friends killed him.  Another tale of how the three men came to end Old Bishop's life is that the he came upon them as they were hunting wild game in violation of a treaty between the settlers and Old Bishop's Timpanogos tribe in the Utah Valley, and they killed him to silence him.  Whatever the case, Richard Ivie, Rufus Stoddard and Gerome Zabriskie killed the man known as Old Bishop.  The story goes that after Stoddard delivered a fatal bullet into Old Bishop's head, they dragged the body to a part of the Provo River near a bar called Box Elder Island.  On the banks of the river (notably fuller then than it is today, not yet diverted for so much use and in a period of abnormally high precipitation), they cut open the dead man's stomach and pulled out his guts, filled the cavity with stones and then sunk the weighted corpse in the river.  The murder, however, did not remain a secret for long, and preceded a brutal conflict that would wipe the Timpanogos tribe from the Utah Valley and open the territory's most fertile land up to Mormon dominance.  In a little over sixth months time, the land would be strewn with the headless bodies of Old Bishop's kin.

Today, local lore holds that Old Bishop returns to testify to his gruesome end every year on the anniversary of his death, and those standing along the banks of the Provo River at night may see his ghostly visage as it rises from the murky water and walks onto the land to then remove the stones that his murderers placed in his belly.  One by one, he withdraws the stones until his stomach is emptied, and then... he simply vanishes.  At least, that's what some people say.
The following is one such account as dictated to me by Brigham Young University alumni Kyran Kendall, recorded in his own words:
This was just two years ago, actually, not long after I returned for the fall semester that year.  I'd had a pretty tough day with my classes, so I went for a walk along the Provo River Parkway to decompress, right?  It wasn't dark when I started, but it was probably getting pretty close to sunset, and it started to get dark fairly well before I was done.  I was listening to music on my phone, and I'd never been too uncomfortable with being out and about a little after dark, plus the river walk isn't exactly out in the wild.  It runs right through town.  I've gone back since and tried to pinpoint where exactly it was that this happened, but honestly, everywhere I've looked, none of it looks exactly like I remember it that night.  The first instant I saw him, he was standing on the other side of the river from where I was, up on the river bank.  He didn't look like a spirit.  It looked like he was really, actually there physically.  I couldn't see through his body, but something about him didn't look right either.  He was an Indian, or Native American, I guess, and he was dressed in frontier clothes that looked old and worn out.  He had a dark button-up shirt with long sleeves, brown pants and long hair pulled back in braids, but he was soaked- no, not even just soaked but almost soggy, if that makes any sense.  He was old, maybe 50 or 60 and dripping water all over.  I took out my earphones- now without my music, I realized it was actually very quiet.  The only sound was the trickling sound of the river running at a moderate pace.  I tried to talk to him, like, you know, "hey, you alright?" you know?  He just looked at me for a second, or maybe it'd be better to say he seemed to be looking through me.  His mouth dropped open suddenly, like whatever muscles had been holding it up suddenly disappeared, and a bunch of water poured out of it.  It was like when you're taking a shower, and you turn off the water before pushing down the, um, the, what's that called- the diverter, but once you do, that bit of water dumps out, right?  Now, I'm not sure how to explain it, because it wasn't really like he was making the sound himself, at least not with his voice, but as soon as his mouth opened, it was as though a sound was happening inside my head, like a low didgeridoo or throat-sing or something, but really low, and I was feeling a bit dizzy like I didn't have enough oxygen.  He then reached his hand into his shirt between the buttons, and when he pulled it out again, he was holding a rock.  He dropped it on the ground without even looking at it or even seeming to notice it, like it was just a purely automatic motor function, you know.  He put his hand in his shirt again, and again pulled out a rock, dropping it on the ground.  He did that again and again for at least a couple minutes, but as clear as the memory is in my mind, the feeling I remember about it is like a blur, and I don't remember how long it went on.  I just stood there looking, feeling dizzy and not knowing what to do.  What's weird is that he didn't just vanish when it was over.  It was like one second I was looking at him, standing there across the river, then I blinked.  It must have taken half a second for me to close my eyes and open them again, but as I closed my eyes, he was there, and by the time they'd popped back open he was gone.  The low sound had stopped; it was only the river again; and I stopped feeling dizzy.  I never knew anything about Old Bishop at the time, but I'm sure it was his spirit.

*The date cited comes from History of Indian Depredations in Utah (1919) by Peter Gottfredson.