Haunted Cheyenne

by Jill Pope

Overview

Learn how the West was haunted, as historian, author, and ghost story collector Jill Pope takes you on a spectral tour of Wyoming's capital city.
 
In 1867, at the spot where the Union Pacific Railroad crossed Crow Creek, the city of Cheyenne was born. Since then, the Magic City of the Plains has had a long history of hauntings. Drop into the Shadows Pub and Grill, and you may find yourself sharing a drink with a spectral patron from another era. Spend a night at the Historic Plains Hotel, and you may run into one of the many ghostly guests who refuse to check out. Even the Wrangler store seems to be home to a phantom cowboy. From the ghosts of the historic depot and rail yard to the spirits that still linger in some of the city's private homes, this frontier town is filled with spooky happenings and chilling sightings. Join writer and guide Jill Pope on a tour of the stories behind this city's most chilling spots.
 
Includes photos!
 
"If there is anyone in town who knows about Cheyenne's ghosts, it's local historian and author Jill Pope. She can rattle off scores of stories tied to most of the buildings downtown, ranging from a murder in the Cheyenne Depot to a freak accident outside the Hynds Building." —Wyoming Tribune Eagle

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625846136
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	10/20/2018
Series:	Haunted America
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	145
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Jill Pope has worked for the Visit Cheyenne Convention & Visitor's Bureau and Cheyenne Street Railway Trolleys for over ten years. During that time, she has written the trolley historic tours and the annual ghost tour scripts, working with various paranormal groups and presenting on the subject at local venues.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

FIFTEENTH STREET

1. HISTORIC CHEYENNE DEPOT: FIFTEENTH STREET AND CAPITOL AVENUE

Tracking Spirits

When you arrive in downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming, you're bound to notice two prominent buildings that rise above the others. One is the elegant, gold-domed Wyoming state capitol building, and nine blocks directly to the south is the historic depot with its steeple clock tower. The buildings face each other, and it is said they were built this way so the government and the railroad could keep an eye on each other. Both buildings are said to have resident ghosts.

I have the privilege of working in the depot. This wonderful building actually sat empty for years after Union Pacific moved its offices out. It narrowly escaped the wrecking ball, only to be skillfully renovated and then designated and protected as a National Landmark. There are about 2,500 National Landmarks in the United States; the depot finds itself in the company of Pearl Harbor and the Ryman Grand Ole Opry.

My office is located on the second of the three floors. My company also operates a tourist visitor center in the lobby. Besides Visit Cheyenne and Cheyenne Street Railway Trolleys, the depot also houses the Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce, LEADS (an economic development entity), the Cheyenne Depot Museum, the depot management offices and Shadows Brew Pub, along with all of their attached ghosts.

When Cheyenne was originally established in 1867, a small wooden depot was built at this location. A decade later, that depot was dragged off to the side with a steam engine, and this prominent brick building was constructed. Standing in the lobby, you can feel the history the building emits. Famous author Ernest Hemmingway married his third wife, Martha Gelhorn, in Cheyenne in 1940; they celebrated their nuptials at the formal and prestigious Hick Hall restaurant, located in the east wing of the depot. Shadows Brew Pub is there today. The past lingers in the depot, where layers on layers of history have lived.

As with any long-standing rail yard, there were serious injuries and deaths in the early period. I have found documentation of some deaths here in old newspaper editions at our Wyoming State Archives. In 1910, a yard watchman had been run over by a train, and his remains were gruesome and mangled. Over one hundred years have passed since a shot rang out in the rail yard; it was 1:45 a.m. on August 5, 1912. Union Pacific watchman LJ Sparr, age twenty-nine, was murdered while monitoring vagrants to prevent boxcar robberies. An hour later, his body was found in the darkness, just beyond the depot between the number one and two freight tracks. The murder was about seventy feet from where the other watchman had been run over two years earlier. Sparr had been shot at close range from behind, evidenced by powder burns below his left ear. The assailant stole the guard's gun after killing him but did not take his wallet, leaving investigators to question whether the aggressor had been a frightened hobo or someone with a more sinister motive. Conductor William Walcott had seen Sparr with a stranger around midnight walking alongside his train. Known as a swift man with a gun, Sparr was very cautious when handling hobos, never allowing anyone to get behind him. Since Sparr had previously been employed at the state penitentiary in Rawlins, it was thought the killer might have been a former inmate. This theory proved true three weeks later when Charles Taylor admitted to killing Sparr. Taylor had served time at the state penitentiary when Sparr worked there. He was considered an evil man.

The next incident involves a woman of questionable morals who lived three blocks north of the depot on Eighteenth Street. She contracted a disease from a miner after having relations. The man refused to help her with the matter. On October 27, 1935, she waited for him at the depot. When he got off the iron horse, she fatally shot him four times.

The most notorious death here was that of Charles Bernard, the Wyoming Division superintendent for the Union Pacific. Charles was casually leaning against a cigar stand chatting with the clerk when a disgruntled employee entered the depot. Without saying a word, he fired three shots at Charles. Charles died instantly, falling to the floor with two bullets in his head and one in his back. The shooter, Perry Carroll, then turned the pistol on himself. He landed beside the superintendent, writhing in pain, but he survived. It turns out that Perry Carroll was a switch tender who had been fired a month earlier for being drunk on the job. He caused such a commotion when he was terminated that the police were summoned, and he was arrested. The murder was premeditated; Carroll had written a letter to his family in Texas telling them his train of thought. Carroll went on trial with an insanity defense. He was sentenced to die in the newfangled gas chamber. The smiling Carroll was executed a little after midnight in August 1937, on Friday the thirteenth.

Charles Bernard had begun his position as the division superintendent on the very same day that another man was shot down in a rail yard shop across the tracks, east of the depot. The Tribune newspaper noted that Barnard's job started with a shooting and ended with another — his own. In the heat of the Great Depression, like many in that hard economic time, Keith Bellars was relieved of his position as receiving clerk. After stewing for two days, Bellars withdrew all his money from the bank and purchased a pistol. Determined to settle the score on this fateful day — another Friday the thirteenth, this time October 1933 — Bellars brandished his loaded gun at "the store" with the intent of shooting division storekeeper R. Mullens. Fortunately for Mullens, he had stepped out. Bellars impatiently paced back and forth outside of the shop, and when he couldn't contain himself any longer, he burst into the shop, randomly firing off his gun as he fiendishly hollered, "I've been double-crossed!" R.H. Fasen was hit twice in the abdomen and suffered an agonizing demise. Chief clerk Floyd Watson was also wounded but would recover. Bellars ran, though he ultimately surrendered to a policeman. He was tried for first-degree murder, found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston. Daringly, he escaped but was quickly recaptured. It's hard to say if the strange noises and eerie feeling in "the store" at night are just products of a creaky old building and the night rail yard environment or if Mr. Fasen lingers on.

With all of these atrocities, it's no wonder there are many accounts of paranormal activity here. It was dead quiet on one snowy January afternoon. Lauren was seated at her computer in the depot visitor center when she heard a child's laughter. This caught her by surprise because she thought she was the only person there. No one had come through the doors. She stood up and looked around but did not see anyone. She heard the laughter again, so she exited the visitor center and walked out into the lobby area, checking the cut-out area that once housed the ticket counter. No one else was in the lobby, but she clearly heard the laughter in the cut-out area.

Lindsey, the depot event coordinator, is sometimes responsible for securing the building after events. Lindsey and her husband have been hearing giggling in the lobby at night when they are the last ones in the building. They also hear things falling and crashing in the cut-out. While checking out the sounds, her husband once felt something blow on his neck. After working in the depot and experiencing these things, Lindsey and her husband joined a paranormal investigation group. She reports that they all saw a black figure of a woman in the same area.

On a calm summer night, Joe was closing up the building. He was alone in the quiet lobby and had already locked the glass front doors. He strode across the room to the opposite end of the lobby near the elevator. It was then that Joe witnessed the interior set of glass doors swiftly open of their own accord. They had been fully closed, and then he saw them unfold to a wide-open position. The exterior set remained closed and locked. There were no drafts, and the wind was not blowing outside.

The Cheyenne Depot Museum is located in the west wing of the building. There are frequent spirit encounters here. When the depot was first renovated and reopened in 2003, there were still a number of small construction projects to be done. One evening, Jim was closing up the building, and Candi was counting the gift shop money drawer. Jim had completed his closing routine inside, so he exited the depot and was doing an outside security walk before heading home. Candi was surprised to see a man inside the lobby; she knew the doors had already been locked. The man was wearing raggedy jeans and a tattered baseball cap. A bit unnerved, Candi spoke to him, asking where he had come from. He said he'd been working upstairs doing a painting job. Before she knew it, he was simply gone, right before her eyes. She had not unlocked the door to let him out. Frightened by her experience with the hereafter, Candi quickly left. The next morning when she spoke to Jim about it, he informed her that there had not been any painting crew upstairs for a month, and he was certain that no one was inside the building when he locked it.

During the late hours of the night, when the building is dark and empty and the security system armed, merchandise has been rearranged in the gift shop. All the lights have come on, chasing the darkness away. In the morning, the staff arrives and finds things out of place, but the doors are still locked and the alarm is still on, leaving them to wonder how things could have been altered. The gift shop manager once saw a pair of earrings fling off the counter. Lindsey says that she has seen the silhouette of a shadow man in the gift shop numerous times. She feels that the whole depot comes alive at night, as if it's a busy functioning train depot with spirits afoot.

Joe had a spine-tingling brush with a presence on the upper floor of the museum. He heard a loud knocking sound. Concerned, he called out, but no one answered, so he carefully ventured closer to the sound. Once he decided there was no one there, he turned and walked toward the exit, but as he approached, he became overwhelmed by a foreboding feeling. All his senses alert, he felt the hair on his arms and neck stand on end. Something unseen was there. Joe shut the doors and briskly walked away. He jumped out of his skin when there was a LOUD bang.

There is a large scale on the main floor of the museum where baggage would be weighed, and a pulley system was in place to draw the heavy trunks up through a hatchway into the second-floor baggage storage area. Members of the Paranormal Hunting Observation Group (PHOG) said they saw a light shining through the hatchway that they couldn't explain. All the lights were off on the second floor, and no one in the group was up there. They went upstairs to see if there was any light up there that could shine down, but there was not. They tried recreating the light with flashlights and switches but were not able to reproduce the same thing. They felt it was unexplained and inconclusive.

Garrett worked his first summer job at the depot. It was a good gig for a fifteen-year-old. The job was simple enough: he ran the model railroad trains and watched over them in the second floor of the depot museum. Late one afternoon, he had finished his shift and was dragging himself down the historic staircase to go home. That's when he felt someone give him a solid push. It wasn't enough to send him tumbling, but he definitely felt a full hand give him a shove. Abruptly, he turned around, only to find that he was the only person in the stairwell. Garrett hustled down the rest of the stairs and escaped into the populated lobby.

The basement seems quite fitting for a ghost dwelling. Portions of it still contain dirt floors and walls. There are several staff members who will not go into the basement, at least not by themselves. A white misty figure has been seen, and there are reports of crazy noises and things being moved. A blue-collar worker from another realm has been sighted in the building on numerous occasions, most often in the gloomy basement and stairwell that descend from the museum.

There are many events such as weddings and festivals held at the depot, inside and out. Andy works these events setting up and taking down. Andy is a religious man who would give you the shirt off his back. The tables and chairs are stored in the basement, so Andy spends a lot of time down there. He has witnessed unusual lights in a small room off the main hallway. Oddly, there is a small window cut into the concrete wall in a room to the side of the elevator. This is simply cut out; there is no glass. Andy and other employees get a strong feeling there is something ominous there in that hole. Sometimes he notices a heavy creosote smell.

A few high school kids had performed at the depot with their school orchestra. They were visiting with Andy, asking him about ghosts in the building. He offered to give them a tour of the basement. The bleak hallway is very narrow, and Andy was leading. The last boy in the line shrieked. A rock had hit him in the back of the head. There was no one behind him to throw the rock. Another evening, Andy and another man were riding the elevator up. All of a sudden, the elevator was filled with a strong creosote stench. Then the elevator lurched to a stop, and they were stuck between floors. After trying to make a call, they began screaming, but no one was in the depot. Finally someone at the attached Shadows Brew Pub heard the commotion and got them assistance.

A former Union Pacific employee who worked there in the early 1980s spoke of ghosts in the building. Footsteps were heard on the second floor, and some people refused to work there. I often think I hear someone working on the other side of the partitions in my second- floor office, but when I speak and don't get a response, I walk over there to discover I am alone in the office. Most of the women feel there is some presence in the ladies' restroom; you never feel alone in there and hear sounds of another person moving around when you are alone. There is a boardroom that is used for many meetings by the tenants and community members alike. A paranormal investigation team saw items slide across the table, and Lindsey heard a can slide across the same table. She also often hears voices and groans in there. This space used to be the office of the Union Pacific superintendent.

The railroad is the reason that Cheyenne exists. When the rail workers made it as far as Cheyenne, they set up their tents a few blocks from where the depot stands today. The nickname "Hell on Wheels" referred to temporary towns that were quickly set up as the tracks were being built. Most of their makeshift buildings were saloons. The pre- fabs came with immense bars, complete with libations. The bartender was set up and serving whiskey shots before the roof was even set on. Gambling tables were laid out, and saloon girls were in position, brandishing derringers in their garters for protection. Once the tracks were finished, the saloons were easily disassembled, loaded back on the train flatcars and moved to the next site to be reassembled. Some of these town sites survived, and some did not, but Cheyenne thrived.

Shadows Pub and Grill

The east wing of the depot houses Shadows Pub and Grill, a present-day saloon, in a building from another time. Most of the staff has experienced paranormal activity here. One night, Jeff, the manager, and Kendra, a waitress, were doing their normal closing routine. The kitchen door began banging, which naturally concerned Jeff, but Kendra simply said, "It's him again." When Jeff questioned her as to who she was referring to, she said it was a railroad guy, and she saw him all the time. Not understanding that Kendra was referring to a ghost, Jeff inspected the kitchen area. He did not see anyone but wanted to make sure a vagrant was not in there. Once satisfied, he went about his tasks. They had stacked all the chairs up on the tabletops when they heard loud banging sounds again. Kendra said, "There he is!" Jeff could not see him, but Kendra could. "Didn't you just see him?" she asked. At that time, two chairs from two different tables crashed to the floor. If they had fallen from the same table, Jeff may have thought that they had not been placed squarely on the table, but there was no reason for chairs to fall from two different areas. They hightailed it out of there.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Haunted Cheyenne"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Jill Pope.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements,
Introduction: Get into the Spirit,
I. FIFTEENTH STREET,
1. Historic Cheyenne Depot: Fifteenth Street and Capitol Avenue,
2. Hofman Building: Depot Street Merchants, 316 West Fifteenth Street,
II. LINCOLNWAY, WEST 100 BLOCK,
3. Historic Plains Hotel: Lincolnway and Central Avenue,
III. LINCOLNWAY, WEST 200 BLOCK,
4. Wrangler Western Store: Southwest Corner of Lincolnway and Capitol Avenue,
5. Hynds Building: Northwest Corner of Lincolnway and Capitol Avenue,
6. The Atlas Theatre: 211 West Lincolnway,
7. DEC'ORoom and Ernie November Store: 215 and 217 West Lincolnway,
8. Wyoming Home: 210–212 West Lincolnway,
IV. LINCOLNWAY, WEST 300 BLOCK,
9. Freedoms Edge Tap House/Tivoli Building: 301 West Lincolnway,
10. Quilted Corner: 309 West Lincolnway,
11. Lavender Boutique: 315 West Lincolnway,
12. Graffito: 317 West Lincolnway,
13. Carnival Antiques: 319 West Lincolnway,
14. Our Place Store: 321 West Lincolnway,
V. EAST LINCOLNWAY,
15. Real Estate Office: East Lincolnway and Morrie Avenue,
VI. SEVENTEETH STREET,
16. Deselms Fine Art: 303 East Seventeenth Street,
17. Knights of Pythias: 312 West Seventeenth Street,
VII. PIONEER AVENUE,
18. Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company Fire Department: 1712 Pioneer Avenue,
VIII. CAPITOL AVENUE,
19. Don Rey's Restaurant: 1617 Capitol Avenue,
20. Wyoming Supreme Court Building: 2301 Capitol Avenue,
21. Wyoming State Capitol: Capitol Avenue and Twenty-Fourth Street,
IX. CAREY AVENUE,
22. City News and Pipe Shop: Eighteenth Street and Carey Avenue,
23. Mrs. Draper: 2116 Carey Avenue,
24. Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum: 4610 Carey Avenue,
X. CENTRAL AVENUE,
25. St. Mark's Episcopal Church: 1908 Central Avenue,
26. Frontier Hotel/Suite Bistro: 1901 Central Avenue,
27. Terry Bison Ranch: 51 I-25 Service Road East,
XI. DOWNTOWN AND RAINSFORD DISTRICT,
28. Avenues Home,
29. Candi Land: South Greeley Highway,
30. Fort D.A. Russell House,
31. For Sale: Home of the Lost Child,
32. Spider Maxwell: Maxwell Avenue,
33. Snuffed Out: East Nineteenth Street,
XII. SOUTH OF THE TRACKS,
34. Help Me: West Sixth Street,
35. Chinese Rail Worker: Bent Avenue,
36. Sixth Street,
37. Darkness within Darkness: East Fifth Street,
38. Life Cycle: Eighth Street,
39. A Grave Situation: Lakeview Cemetery,
Conclusion,
Bibliography,
About the Author,