The winter of 1873 had lulled the people of Minnesota into a false sense of security. January had been unseasonably mild, giving no hint of the coming terror that would be remembered for generations. On January 7, the sky darkened without warning, unleashing one of the most violent snowstorms the Northwest had ever seen. For three relentless days, the storm raged, its fury unmatched for fifty years. Winds howled like demons across the prairies, temperatures plunged to eighteen degrees below zero, and snow, as fine as flour, whipped through the air. The drifts penetrated homes through every crack and crevice, coating floors like ghostly dust. It wasn’t long before tragedy struck, taking seventy lives in Minnesota, including that of John Weston.
Weston, a farmer from Seward Township, had been to Graham Lakes to fetch a load of wood. As he made his way back, the storm enveloped him in its icy grip. His oxen trudged through the blinding white, but the farmhouse he sought never appeared. Disoriented, he circled his own land twice, the tracks of his sled later revealing his confusion. Realizing his dire situation, Weston made a desperate decision. He abandoned his team and began walking into the storm, heading north toward Hersey.
He was doomed. The storm showed no mercy as Weston fought his way through twelve miles of snow and biting wind. By the time exhaustion overtook him, he had reached a desolate patch of prairie. With frozen hands, he clutched the grass as he fell, blood pouring from his nose, staining the snow around his lifeless body. Spring would come before his frozen corpse was found, still grasping at the earth, his face marked with the final signs of his struggle.
But John Weston’s story did not end there.
His friend, Edward Cosper, was a practical and down-to-earth man. The day after the storm, Cosper had joined his neighbors in searching for Weston, but their efforts were in vain. As the storm raged on, Cosper returned home, exhausted from the day’s search. He was feeding his animals at dusk when something strange happened. From the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar figure walking up the path from the creek. It was Weston, dressed in his blue soldier overcoat, hands tucked under the cape, just as he always wore it.
Cosper’s heart skipped a beat. “How goes it?” Weston said with his usual friendly smile, as if nothing had happened.
Cosper, stunned, replied, “Weston, I thought you were frozen to death!”
With an almost casual tone, Weston confirmed the impossible: “I am, and you’ll find my body a mile and a half northwest of Hersey.” Before Cosper could say another word, Weston vanished into thin air.
Still shaken, Cosper took a moment to process what had just occurred. It wasn’t until later that night, sitting by his fire, that the full weight of what he had seen hit him. Weston was dead—he had seen a ghost.
The strange events didn’t end with Cosper. That same night, Weston’s wife was awakened by a knock at the door. Groggy and disoriented, she heard a voice, one that sounded eerily like her brother’s, telling her, “Did you know that John was frozen to death?” Her son heard it too, but when she opened the door, there was no one outside, and no tracks in the freshly fallen snow. Her brother, it turned out, had never been there.
It seemed Weston, knowing his fate, had returned to break the news to his loved ones in a way only a ghost could—gentle, familiar, but undeniably unsettling.
As the snow thawed and spring arrived, Cosper’s vision was confirmed. John Weston’s body was found exactly where he had said it would be, a mile and a half northwest of Hersey.