Ghosts have been seen and heard on battlefields, and in the Stone House, Visitors Center and Apartment C.
Native American Tribes that fought against Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his troops were the Sioux Nation: Hunkpapa, Lakota, Sans Arc, Oglala, Miniconjoux, and Blackfoot, and the allied Cheyenne. Most warriors survived. In addition to Custer, 263 troops and Army personnel were killed. According to most stories, the only survivor was a horse, Comanche. The inscription, if correct, on Thomas J. Stower’s gravestone in Odd Fellow Cemetery near Baxter, Tennessee, refutes this. It’s written that he survived Custer’s Last Stand.
Stone House at Little Big Horn
- This structure was built in 1894 as a home for the park’s Superintendent. The lower level of the two-storey building was once used to store bodies before burial. The second floor is an apartment.
- A woman's form has been seen descending the stairs.
- Footsteps sound upstairs when no one’s there. A ranger woke and felt someone sitting at the foot of his bed. He was alone, reached for his revolver and saw a shadowy figure of a soldier, head and legs missing, move from the bed and disappear into another room.
- There are two bedrooms on the first floor and a door with a padlock on the inside. Two staff members were asleep in the rooms behind the locked door. One was awakened by loud bangs on the opposite side of the wall. The door was locked. The knocking stopped by the time the other person awoke.
- Al and Florence Jacobson saw a doorknob turn by itself, heard inexplicable footsteps coming from the empty upstairs apartment and discovered objects moved during their absence.
- Four people spent the night in the building. One man slept in the apartment, a father and son shared the living room’s sleeper sofa and the young woman slept downstairs. She woke when she heard footsteps upstairs. Moments later, there were louder footsteps so strong that paint shavings fell from the windows’ edge. The kitchen door slammed shut. She fled from the house to try to sleep in her car. The next morning she told the men what happened. They were puzzled. None of them heard footsteps, but the father had been wakened by a loud bang that could have been the door.
Specters in the Little Big Horn's Battlefield Park
- A woman saw a warrior’s ghost on horseback rush at a dozing park employee. The apparition counted coup, the custom of touching an enemy in battle with a stick or hand, then rushed away. The man awoke asking what happened.
- A taxi driver saw cavalrymen and braves skirmish. He was shaken and went to the Visitors Center where employees calmed him.
- Mardell Plainfeather, former ranger and Crow Tribe member, saw two phantoms of warriors dressed for war on the battlefield.
- One night, Mardell heard three knocks at her bedroom door. No one was there. She and husband Dan searched the house, but found no one other than their sleeping children. The next day, they learned Dan’s grandmother died that night.
- It’s been said Custer's ghost appeared to author Charles Kuhlman
Little Big Horn's Visitors Center
- Lights turn on and voices call out after the facility is closed and locked.
- An employee was returning items to the storage area. He saw a shadowy figure that appeared to be a soldier in a dark corner. The specter walked through the room’s locked door.
Apartment C, Little Big Horn
- Christine Hope saw an apparition of a moustached man sitting at a table. Finally, it vanished. Later, she saw a picture of Lt. Benjamin H. Hodgson who was killed in battle. He was the ghost she had seen.
Sources:
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown, (A Bantam Book, 1972)
Haunted America, Michael Norman & Beth Scott, (Tor, 1994)
The copyright of the article Haunters of the Little Big Horn in Ghosts & Hauntings is owned by Jill Stefko . Permission to republish Haunters of the Little Big Horn in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
