The Haunted Places in Wyoming by Sarah J. McNeal

Happy Hollerween My Darlings

It's Halloween and, although I personally do not believe in ghosts, I love discovering haunted places. Since all of my western stories take place in  the fictional town of Hazard, Wyoming, but in a real location near the Green River, I decided to look up the haunted places along the river. There are 81 haunted places in Wyoming, I had to find a way to pare that down to a reasonable number I could blog about.
So, here is a little sompthin'-sompthin about the haunted places along the Green River.

Yellowstone National Park - Old Faithful Inn

The hotel is about 95 years old. Various apparitions including a man in a big black hat and a bride that was beheaded on her wedding night by her new husband. There was also an incident where two guests woke in the middle of the night in a steamy hot room with their night clothes completely removed and folded neatly at the foot of their bed. The radiator in their room was stone-cold.

Evanston - Wyoming State Hospital

A single sheet hangs in a room window facing the interstate. Authorities thought it necessary to place it there because of repeated sightings of a young girl reliving her death (caused by hanging) every night. Many people have born witness to this disturbing occurrence. There is no power and lights will be on at night a rocker that will be rocking howling noises strange floating lights are all reported.

Kemmerer - Fossil Country Museum

A dance team practices there in the late afternoon. They always hear thumps and bumps. They are the only ones in the museum at the time. In the museum part of the building you can feel a presence. It is very creepy. Also read somewhere that it's the 3rd most haunted place in the United States.

Green River - Sweetwater County Court House

On the Morning Watch shift in the Sheriffs Office you may see a tall figure walk past the windows in between the offices. You expect someone to walk into the dispatch center and no one does. This tall figure has also been seen to follow people in and out of the building. On a rare occasion you can feel someone touch your hair or hear a voice. In other locations of the court house there is known to be other hauntings. In the jail kitchen a coffee pot spilt by itself or mixing bowls fell off the counter. Downstairs in other offices people have reported a hand on their shoulder or a general uneasy feeling. No matter where you are in the court house around 3am chances are the hair on the back of your neck will stand up...if you are really paying attention

Rock Springs-Rock Springs, Wyoming Imperial Apartments

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The Rock Springs Wyoming Imperial Apartments (recently renamed the 'RS Apartments') was built on top of an old prison graveyard, but that bodies were never removed before building took place. In some of the apartments you're likely to get cold chills, the feelings of being watched, and sometimes you'll even start to have dreams of the prisoners that were buried under the buildings. A 19 year old female in building D started having nightmares about a boy, around her age, with platinum blonde hair, whom she had never seen before in her life. The boy would get dragged onto the floor by 'something', then all of a sudden, she would be in the boys position looking up at herself. She felt a squeezing sensation come over her body and felt like she couldn't breathe. The feeling felt as though she was being posessed. Doors have also been known to slam on their own, furniture will move when nobody is sitting in it (i.e a rocking chair), and you'll get the overall feeling that you're not wanted.

Rock Springs - County Offices Building

there have been many strange and unusual happening in the building mostly at night when a lonely deputy is on duty making copies in the office or just simply sitting down and having a cup of coffee Report seeing people out of the corner of their eye when the building is empty. He shook it off again and went back to his reports when suddenly he turned around and there standing in front of him was an old man wearing a blue bathrobe and blue slippers. He said the old man just looked up at him and turned around and walked out.. The deputy not realizing what had just happened followed the man out the door but when he reached the hallway there was no one to be found! Another unexplained happening happened around the same time when the Emergency Management Director was sitting in his office early in the morning and was drinking a cup of coffee when suddenly someone slapped the back of his chair and sent him flying up on top of his desk! When he turned around to investigate he realized that no one was in the room with him let alone no one was even in the building at the time of the event!

Sweetwater-Sweetwater Co. Library

The Sweetwater County Library was constructed on an old Indian cemetery. Items move by themselves. Apparitions have been seen.

Rawlins-Rawlins High School

The High School is less than two blocks from the middle school and may be on the same ground. There have been sightings and sounds throughout the building but the worst area seems to be the auditorium. When it was being built a worker fell from one of the catwalks and was killed when he landed on the chairs below. There have also been a few other deaths reported in the area. An area under the stage where props and sets are kept called Siberia is a hot spot as well. Lights turn on and off by themselves things move around and you can hear voices when no one else is down there. Interestingly it is also the part of the school that is closest to the middle school.

Rawlins - Rawlins Middle School

There is a 2-3 acre area including RMS which is supposedly an Indian burial ground and passage of an old pioneer trail. Almost all of the houses in this area have reported sightings both of Indians and old-fashioned people. A janitor at the Middle School was working one night when a short well-dressed man approached her. She asked him his name and he bolted. She chased after him and as he turned a corner she could see that he no longer had a head. All of the janitors that have worked there have similar experiences including strange noises and moving objects. In two houses in particular about 2 blocks away from RMS the activity is especially bad. They have reported apparitions moving objects and have even recorded clear voices on a cassette tape hidden in an upstairs bedroom while the family was away.

Carbon - Medicine Bow- Virginian

A ghost is said to haunt the rooms and restaurant. Employees have reported items mysteriously moved around and have reported sightings of ghosts throughout the old hotel.

Medicine Bow - Virginian Hotel

Numerous cold spots and ghostly music in this virtually abandoned hotel in south-central Wyoming.

Encampment - Battle Lake/Slaughterhouse Gulch

There is an area between Encampment and the old mining ghost town of Battle known as Slaughterhouse Gulch. An explosion in a mine near the area killed a miner. There wasn't enough of him left to bury properly. So it was said he walked and roamed through Slaughterhouse Gulch. Dorothy Peryam and her first husband Horace Quivey her brother John and his wife Eda were camped in the area in 1918. The men were marking timber there for the Forestry Service. It was dusk and they had made their campfire. Dorothy and John were standing close to the road when they heard a hollow cough and looked up to see a man walking down the road toward them. He walked past them not looking to the right or left or at them. They could not hear his footsteps as he walked by. It was very peculiar in those days for a stranger to be alone in the mountains at dark without a horse or supplies. He would have approached the fire to talk. But this person acted as though they weren't there. Charles M. Scribner ran a stage line between Battle and Encampment. One of his drivers quit because on one occasion a man approached his team of six horses walked right between them and disappeared. The horses reared and bolted and it was all the driver could do to control them. He was sure it was the Ghost of Slaughterhouse Gulch.

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- Second Floor, 

Third floor

Second Floor: Wailing sounds hear at night from outside the windows faces can be seen within the windows. Basement Beating drum sounds within the basement. Basement- Any possible light cannot penetrate the complete darkness lingering within the area.

Third Floor: feeling of always being watched after dark.

Laramie - University of Wyoming- prep school

elementary to 9th Grade repots of locker doors slamming the felling of being watched in the library and felling that you are not alone in the girls bathroom on the second floor.

Burns - Burns High School

The Library there have been many sightings of walls shaking and stuff falling off the walls.

Here is the entire list of 81 haunted places is Wyoming (for inquiring minds)

Albany - Laramie- town square

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- Second Floor

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- South end of the West Wing

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- Third floor

Arapahoe - Arapahoe Middle School

Burns - Burns High School

Byron - Rocky Mountain High School

Carbon - Medicine Bow- Virginian

Casper - Ivy House Inn B&B

Casper - Natrona County High school

Casper - Townsend Hotel

Casper - Wonder Bar

Cheyenne - Atlas Theater

Cheyenne - Deming School

Cheyenne - Francis E. Warren Air Force Base

Cheyenne - Old Underground Tunnels

Cheyenne - Plains Hotel

Cheyenne - St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Cody - Cedar Spirit Mountain

Cody - Coe medical center

Cody - Irma Hotel

Crowheart - Wind River mountains

Encampment - Battle Lake/Slaughterhouse Gulch

Ethete - Blue Sky Hall

Ethete - Ethete's Old Faith Hall

Ethete - The Esthete tribal office

Evanston - Old High School

Evanston - Wyoming State Hospital

Fort Bridger - Cemetery

Fort Bridger - Fort Bridger State Historic Site

Fort Laramie - Old Officer's Quarters

Fort Laramie - Fort

Gebo - Cemetary

Gillette - Kost Kutters

Green River - Green River Library

Green River - Sweetwater County Court House

Kemmerer - Fossil Country Museum

Laramie - Laramie Plains Civic Center

Laramie - Wyoming Territorial Prison

Laramie - University of Wyoming lab school

Laramie - University of Wyoming- prep school

Lovell - Cane

Lovell - Motorcross

Lovell - Shoshone Bar

Lusk - Silvercliff Motel

Lusk - The Yellow Motel

Medicine Bow - Virginian Hotel

Morton - Old Morton High School

Park County - Meeteetse- Cowboy Bar

Powell - Northwest College

Powell - Northwest College- Auditorium

Powell / Cody - Heart Mountain Relocation Center

Rawlins - Ferris Mansion

Rawlins - Old Wyoming State Penitentiary

Rawlins - Rawlins High School

Rawlins - Rawlins Middle School

Riverton - Acme Theater

Riverton - The Broker

Riverton - The Old Hosptial

Riverton - Splitrock Coffee & Bagels

Riverton - St. Stephens

Riverton - St. Stephen's Indian Mission

Rock Springs - County Offices Building

Rock Springs - Rock Springs Wyoming Imperial Apartments

Sheridan - The Historic Sheridan Inn

Sheridan - Kendrick Mansion

Sheridan - Public Cemetery

Sheridan - Sheridan Inn

St. Stephen's - St. Stephen's Mission- The Keil Gym

Sweetwater - Sweetwater Co. Library

Thermopolis - The County Library

Thermopolis - County Museum

Thermopolis - Hot Springs Public Health

Thermopolis - Kwik mart

Thermopolis - Old middle school

Torrington - Middle School

Upton - Old High School Site

Wind River Indian Reservation - The Reservation

Wind River Indian Reservation - Fort Washakie School

Wind River Indian Reservation - St. Stephens School Keil Gym

Yellowstone National Park - Old Faithful Inn

THE BEAST OF HAZARD

THE BEAST OF HAZARD, a Wilding series story, and part of the 2014 Halloween anthology, COWBOYS, CREATURES, and CALICO, volume 1, has just released as a single short story from Prairie Rose Publications this month.

A Terrorized Town…A Killer Beast…And Deliverance

Joey Wilding isn’t certain what’s killing the livestock in Hazard. Some believe it’s a bewitched beast, others a wolf gone rabid. As the town veterinarian, he’s seen mutilation before, but not like this, as if something enjoyed the killing.

When Claire Beau asks Joey to help her injured wolf-dog, and begs his discretion, he begins to suspect he has found the Beast of Hazard—and its beautiful mistress. But as he walks through the woods after dark, something more ominous than any wolf stalks him from the shadows.

Buy Links:  AMAZON  SMASHWORDS

To purchase the boxed set of COWBOYS, CREATURES & CALICO, volumes 1&2 Now only 99cents!!

Buy Links: Volumes 1&2 Boxed Set

To find more of my Wildings series of western romances, click onto "The Wildings" below.

 Sarah J. McNeal

Sarah J. McNeal is a multi-published author of several genres including time travel, paranormal, western and historical fiction. She is a retired ER and Critical Care nurse who lives in North Carolina with her four-legged children, Lily, the Golden Retriever and Liberty, the cat. Besides her devotion to writing, she also has a great love of music and plays several instruments including violin, bagpipes, guitar and harmonica. Her books and short stories may be found at Prairie Rose Publications and its imprints Painted Pony Books, and Fire Star Press. Some of her fantasy and paranormal books may also be found at Publishing by Rebecca Vickery and Victory Tales Press. She welcomes you to her website and social media:

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