In other news: Donner Party horror flick

Well, the latest flap seems to have died down, and not a minute too soon, either. This is exactly what happened in back January 2006: archaeologists report that they found no evidence of cannibalism in the bone fragments at one Donner Party site, and the idiot media turns it into "Donner Party cannibalism a total myth!" Gabrielle Burton, the author of two recent books about Tamzene Donner, confronted the nonsense in a Huffington Post article, and I hope it has an effect.

But now another myth has reared its ugly head again. Back in 2007, there was some buzz about Necrosis, a horror film with a Donner Party theme. Well, it's finally being released next week.

According to the official website, during the winter of 1846 a wagon train was trapped in the Sierra Nevada. "As days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, the members of the Donner Party slowly dissolved into madness, eventually turning on each other in what became a desperate, cannabalistic slaughter."

Statements like the above, and the perennial comments likening the Democrats or Republicans to a "modern Donner Party," demonstrate the all-too-common misconception that the Donner Party was a feeding frenzy and the trapped emigrants turned upon one another in a savage bid to survive. This faulty premise is the basis of what happens in Necrosis: More than a century later, six friends arrive at a Sierra Nevada cabin to spend a weekend in the snow; ghastly revenants of the emigrants return to slaughter the hapless young people -- or do they? Here's a trailer.

The film didn't get good reviews, and after kicking around in limbo for a year or so, it's finally coming out as a straight-to-DVD release on Tuesday, April 20. Not having seen it, I can't recommend it, but dyed-in-the-wool Donner Party fanatics can pre-order a copy at Amazon.com or from the movie website.

"Necrosis" trailer

Last year I blogged about a forthcoming horror movie with a Donner Party theme, and now it looks like Necrosis is nearing release. From what I can tell, it has the usual plot: a group of young people goes off to have fun at some location or other that turns out to have a dark history; they are terrorized by a specter from the past that stalks them and strikes them down one by one. In this case, of course, the location is a cabin in the Sierra Nevada, haunted by some sort of horror left over from the Donner Party. Here's the trailer from YouTube. Ya know, the tall guy with with the axe does look rather like Louis Keseberg...

Donner, Donner everywhere (updated)

So much has been happening on the Donner Party front this spring that it's hard to know where to start.

Yesterday I was surprised and pleased to hear of another book in the works, this one with a very different approach. In 1973 Gabrielle Burton was bitten by the Tamzene Donner bug. Over the years she's pursued Tamzene, traveling to Newburyport, Mass., Elizabeth City, N.C., Springfield, Ill., and of course, the Donner Lake area, in her search, often with her family in tow. Next year the University of Nebraska Press will publish Searching for Tamsen Donner, which chronicles Gabrielle's quest, tells Tamzene's story, and includes the texts of Tamzene's letters. Sounds great!

Over the years, we've heard so much about the Donners and the Reeds (and more recently the Breens) that other Donner Party members have been slighted. I've tried to remedy this in my own research by concentrating more on the other families and single men, and am therefore pleased to report on projects involving the Murphy and Graves families.

Marysville, Calif., was named for Donner Party survivor Mary Murphy Covillaud; her sisters Sarah and Frances also lived there for several years, and their brother William was a prominent citizen of the town. I've been working with three Marysville ladies, all active in local history circles, who have developed a novel approach to presenting the story of the Murphy family: Sarah Murphy Foster (Kathy Sedler), Harriet Murphy Pike Nye (Sue Cejner-Moyers), and Mary Murphy Covillaud (Karen Compton) each take a turn to speak about part of the family's experience. The Three Murphy Sisters have been very well received and have gotten several requests for future presentations.

I was delighted to learn from Daniel James Brown that he's finished the first draft of his Donner Party book, Seeking Sarah (what is it with these missing Donner Party females?), which focuses on Sarah Graves Fosdick and the Graves family. I very much look forward to seeing it, because, although I try not to play favorites, I have a particular affinity for the Graveses -- five of the six surviving children of the family lived in the area of Northern California where I grew up, and descendants live there to this day. I've gotten to know several of them and they're fine folks. The Graves family's story, filtered through most histories' pro-Reed bias, has yet to be told adequately, and I'm confident that Dan will do them justice.

And then there are the movies. Necrosis, which wrapped in February, is a horror film: six friends, trapped by snow in an isolated cabin in the Sierra Nevada, are haunted by the ghosts of the Donner Party. Not a bad premise, really, but the creators perpetuate the tiresome canard that the Donner Party slaughtered one another a hunger-induced frenzy.

The filming of The Forlorn has just ended -- see previous blog entry called "The movie that couldn't be made." From the title and the dramatis personae, it's obviously about the Forlorn Hope -- the snowshoers who set out from Donner Lake in mid-December 1846 to seek help. More details coming soon!