Oscar Blevins Farm is a historic homestead that includes a chicken coop, a very large barn with a hog shed, a corn crib and on the farm are two homes, the first is a log house believed to be built in 1879 by John B. Blevins, a great uncle of Oscar Blevins and the father of Jake Blevins. Oscar and his wife Ermon lived in the log home beginning in 1940. They later built on the land a newer wood framed home in the 1950's and lived there until 1979 when the land was purchased by the park. They chose to live without modern day essentials such as electric, indoor plumbing, etc. In 1975, the government condemned Blevins’ property to include it into the newly established Big South Fork National Park. Thirteen years later, in 1988, Oscar Blevins died. An acquaintance of Mr. Blevins told a ranger that Oscar had grieved himself to death over the loss of his farm. After Mr. Blevins passed away, park staff began to notice unusual things at the Blevins Farmstead. more than one ranger reported getting the "willies" while at Oscar’s farm. One hot summer evening, a ranger was unsaddling a horse inside the corral behind the barn when his hair stood up on end. Someone was watching him. The ranger looked behind him. Just outside the barn stood an old fellow wearing bib overalls and a black slouch hat. The ranger hailed the man in the overalls and continued to unsaddle his horse. Then he carried the saddle to the barn so that he could chat with the elderly park visitor when he was done. But in the time it took the ranger to set the saddle down and come out of the barn, the old man had vanished. The old man with the slouch hat appeared again sometime in the early 1990's. Early one morning, the Bandy Creek wrangler went to Oscar’s farm to pick up a horse and load it into a trailer. As the wrangler led the horse out of the barn, the horse stopped at the barn door and reared back. This behavior was out of character for this normally docile mare. Coaxing the horse with encouraging words, the wrangler pulled on the halter, but the mare absolutely refused to cross the threshold of the barn door. Suddenly the wrangler’s scalp began to prickle. Feeling a presence, the wrangler looked over his shoulder. Standing not more than 30 feet from the doorway of the Blevins cabin was an old man wearing bib overalls and a slouch hat. "She won’t come out will she?" the old man said, sending chills down the wrangler’s spine and causing the mare to fight the lead. Returning his attention to the horse, the wrangler grappled with the desperate animal. As soon as he got the mare under control, the wrangler looked around for the old man, but he was nowhere to be found. Big South Fork hikers who see an old man in bib overalls and slough hat around the Bandy Creek area may be seeing Oscar Blevins' ghost. How park rangers have seen a spirit that could be Blevins is one of the many ghostly tales in a book "Haunted Hikes: Spine-Tingling Tales and Trails From North America's National Parks" ($16.95, Santa Monica Press). In the last picture on the right you will see a white shadow, I promise you that my brother nor I were smoking when he took this picture. Second pic from left top which is dark, zoom in and tell me that's not a chair sitting there in a home that has been vacant for years. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~