Warning this episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing. Imagine this if you will. You're visiting a town, a town that hasn't had a full time resident in over 100 years. Some of the abandoned buildings have crumbled into heaps of debris, while others remain standing. And in those buildings is still the original furniture and items from the homeowners who have long since passed.
You can reach out and touch these items, touch history, and feel the presence of those who once lived in this place. Then the wind blows and you hear what sounds like a voice calling your name. This is a common experience in many of America's ghost towns, and in the United States. A large number exist out west due to the booms and busts of the Gold Rush.
Paranormal activity and strange happenings have been reported in a lot of these towns, these supernatural events often attributed to the town's violent history. Tonight we look at five of the most haunted ghost towns and ask if there is any truth to the paranormal reports. This is a study of strange. I have an earnest obsession with ghost towns. There's an eeriness factor. Some of them are supposedly haunted, which definitely adds to that obsession. But it's more than that.
There's a sense of adventure if you're lucky enough to explore them, and they provide a direct, tangible connection to the past, like a living museum. I'm Michael May, that's all I'm going to say about that. I was going to say a little more Adam, and I was like, nope, that's it. So I'm I'm Michael, I'm your host. And today Adam Stillwell is joining me, a filmmaker. Who are you best known as? The, the free fall. Is that probably your most popular piece of.
Probably. That's the last thing I did that in the triangle or my my direct, real films. Yeah. Nice. Nice. And the triangles, like 2016 16. Yeah, yeah. And they. I just won the rights back. So we're, that will be back out there again soon, but it's we pulled it all down to, see where we can go with it next. Well, fantastic. He's, Adam is a fantastic filmmaker and writer and producer. Do you want to tell anybody else about anything about yourself?
Oh, I you know, I might be, with the help of, chats with Michael, getting into the podcast game through audio series world. At some point, and then. Yeah. No, my, the movie The Free Fall is actually out on Hulu and Disney Plus, if you want to check it out and see how weird my brain actually has. Yes. Everybody shut in in Canada zone. Is it Shawn Ashmore? Shawn Ashmore, the handsomest man? Yes. Yeah, man. His eyes. Yeah. Creamy. So yes, they are. They? Yes they are.
He's a great dude. Great dude. Yep. And on on. Oh, and Andrea Lando, who just, she was just on the new Kathy Bates. Matlock. Matlock. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely awesome. So you I wanted you on this episode because you briefly mentioned you were like, ooh, ghost towns. And you should panic because you're from Montana. Is that correct? I, I am from Montana, and, it's Ghost Town Central.
There's all different types of ghost towns up there, but Bannock is, the, the famous one and, Yeah, I actually went there on my eighth grade, history trip. So I. Oh, so. Yes. Not to spoil anything, but I am going to talk about panic today. So excited to have you. Oh no no no no, that's not an apology. That's like, I'm glad because I want to discuss these things because I love ghost towns. And I've been to a quite a handful in California specifically, maybe even 1 or 2 in Nevada.
I've even been to, like, abandoned mining sites just out when you're like, in BLM land and you're wandering around or like, I've filmed stuff and you're like, oh my God, this is an old plane. And there's just like mining equipment left in some huts. And it's fascinating. It's super eerie. The reason I haven't done a ghost town before on this show is because I like to do a lot of research. They're really hard to research because all the claims of the spooky things are all just like folk tales.
So luckily today I picked some places that you can find some specific research. Not a lot, but some specific research that may make you think about some haunted things, which I love. But yeah. So when we get to Bannack, it'll be really interesting to talk to somebody that's been on the ground. That's really cool. Now, do you believe are you do you like horror things? Obviously. Do you believe in ghosts?
So this is this is an interesting, that's very interesting question for me because I have seen UFOs. I, I've experienced the effects of voodoo. I've wandered the woods enough to know that if Sasquatch was out there and he was going to eat a little kid or anyone, he would have gotten me, but, ghosts. I've never seen one. But they scare the shit out of me. They, so I, I don't know, there's part of me that just feels they must be real.
I don't believe anything completely until I see it or experience it. Right. But, that fear and I've, I don't know, I've been to places where I've felt different. But, you know, you never know if that's yourself or if that's, you know, something else, of the place, which I think is a really cool part about ghosts in general, is that it's usually attached to a place, you know, unless it's a person. But I think that's more demons. Yeah. Good point.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's interesting talking about ghost towns because, yeah, a lot of the accounts, which is what makes it so hard to like research and try to find specifics. But there's a lot of accounts of these place. All the places I'm going to mention today, there are accounts just like this where people are like, I just feel like I'm being watched. Yeah. And because of the very interesting history with places like this and you try to attach certain energies to a location. Yeah.
You know, I have no answers about this. People that listen to the show. No, I'm a I'm a bit of a skeptic of these things, but I do I do believe in sort of these weird energies that can get connected with history and time and place and, yeah, it's it's a fascinating thing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, ghosts to me go along with aliens and time travelers, and yet they can kind of mesh like, I'm not sure a ghost is just the spirit of, you know, someone who died in the area or something.
It could be something altogether different as well. Yeah, but, yeah, the eyes watching you. That's creepy. Yeah. Yeah, they definitely are. Right. So. I'm going to dive in to some ghost towns here, and I'm going to start us off with a bit of a bang. It might be. Might be the most famous or talked about ghost town in America. And that is Bodie, California. Have you ever been to Bodie? I have not. Okay, so I've been to Bodie, once a very, very. I couldn't stay long.
And it's an amazing place because I love history, and it feels like I mentioned it earlier. Like living museums. Like I just wandered around was like. Oh, wow. Oh, the inside of here, you can still see a glass jar from 1901 or whatever. Like, it's really fascinating. So I'll give you a little background. First, located in the Sierra Nevada mountains near the border of Nevada, Bodie existed because of California's gold rush. Once it's raining, that can't talk today. There you go.
Once a thriving mining hub, Bodie now lies in a state of what they call arrested decay. As it's preserved as a California state historic park. It was established in 1859 by William Bodie after he found some gold in the area, and he had been tireless. Tyler tirelessly. I have a sore throat, so it's hard talk today. The normal I apologize. Tirelessly is a tough one. It's a tough. One, yeah. Do your thing. Do things.
Tirelessly. Yeah. He had been tirelessly searching for gold for about ten years, and his luck had turned because he found it. However, he soon died in a blizzard getting stuck in a blizzard. Poor guy. And so he missed this. The boom and bust of the town that took on his namesake. But gold in the area there was aplenty in eight. And in 1861 a mill was built, and then there was a massive influx of thousands of hopeful miners, and they all were licking their lips, dreaming of the yummy, yummy gold.
And at its peak, the town boasted of a population of near 10,000 people, complete with saloons. Apparently there were over 60 saloons in this place. There was. There were brothels. There is a Chinatown. There were banks. It was definitely like, you know, a budding, budding, kind of like a Deadwood sort of boomtown of the time. Yeah. And there was an issue with it, though, which is Bodie is very remote. It's not easy to get in and out of.
And because of that remoteness, there became a reputation for the town, I'll call it, for lawlessness. Gunfights became, like, very prominent in the area, and not just of folktale. They're very real. And there's a lot of accounts, there's newspaper articles. There are so many gunfights and murders. It was just a very, very dangerous place. And on that note, I'm going to have you read something, Adam. Cool. If you don't mind, let me find out which one it was. Number one. Let's. Yeah. Number one.
So this is from a newspaper article I forgot to write down the date, but I think it's sometime in the 1860s. I want to say like 1865. So go ahead. Go ahead and write it when you're ready. All right. Bodie, January 15th Thomas H. Treloar, who was murdered by Joseph de Roesch Friday morning, was buried today. The vigilantes committee were all over town last night searching for the roach and went through several houses as well as the jail, but he could not be found.
Great indignation is felt against Deputy Sheriff Farnsworth through the through, whose negligence or worse the escape was effected and Vigilance Committee were after him last night to make him produce the prisoner or make consequences. There is less excitement tonight. The coroner's jury have brought in a verdict, finding that Treloar came to his death at the hands of Darrow's a willful, premeditated murder.
Deputy Sheriff Corrigan is censor censored for for gross neglect, and Deputy Sheriff Farnsworth is declared criminally careless. Farnsworth left town tonight to avoid being lynched. Yeah, so let's just git. It's legit. I just. Wanted to. That doesn't tie into a specific ghost story or haunted story of the town, but I just wanted to give an example of, like, it's super dangerous. There's murder. Even the sheriffs, the law enforcement, they're all bad, too.
These places are so trendy, you know, like the gold places, the oil places, and they're just trendy and dirty. That's trendy and. Dirty. And if you believe in ghosts, that is a nice foray into potentially some spirited hunts. Absolutely. And those are places that people come. They live, they kill, they leave, you know. So yeah, lots of ghost towns have similar, you know, back stories in fact. Do you mind reading number two as well? Sure. It's just a different story, but something simple.
Oh. Got it. Yeah. Cold blooded murder in Bodie. Felix Donnelly, who had who had some who had had some previous difficulty with William Degan, walked up to the ladder and shot him four times in the back. Deegan emptied his revolver one one shot taking effect in the abdomen of a bystander. Deegan had been concerned in many shooting a phrase for fear of lynching. Deegan was removed from Bodie. So a lot of a lot of fear of lynching, which is. Yeah, verifying. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'd get out of there too, but yeah. Yes. And that just goes to show you as well, like, you know, there is law enforcement in these places. But even then mob rule is still the rule of law in these places. And if people are upset enough, you're you're just a goner. Sure. Yeah. So it's, pretty scary place. I'm glad I didn't live there back then. Yes. Yeah. So, Bodie, the town had a lot of success and prosperity for a short period of time.
As the 20th century neared, gold deposits started to dwindle. Miners started going elsewhere, looking for other, you know, things to mine. And there were also two fires 40 years apart. But there are still two fires which kind of decimated the town in 1932, was one of them then. The earlier one was 1892. And by 1915 Bodie had declined to. I mean, there just weren't many people that live there at all. By 1915 and in 1962, the it became a state park.
So the state took over and tried to preserve it as best they can. And there's about 200 of its original buildings still standing. Wow. Yeah, yeah. It's really it's a big one. Yeah it is, but isn't bannock like that too? I mean, bannock seems. No. Yeah okay. Okay. Not not not nearly that big. I don't as far as I recall. And remember. Cool. Yeah. So now for some creepy tales of Bodie. If you stroll through Bodie, the sensation, the most common occurrence.
You and I already talked about it, but it's this feeling of being watched. And many people that that visit there get this feeling. And they say that it kind of lingers with them. Some even claim it follows them home. And then there's some ghost stories too. So among the most well known apparitions is a ghost of an old woman in what's called the Gregory House. And sometimes she's seen knitting in a rocking chair.
And there's also a common apparition of what's believed to be a Chinese maid who is said to haunt the town, particularly if you have kids, like if you go with kids. The maid apparently try to play with the kids or. Yeah. You know, touch the kids or whatever. And in the town cemetery visitors have also reported hearing disembodied giggles, which I think is one of the most terrifying sounds in the world. A disembodied giggle. Yes, yes. And that is supposedly the ghost of a young girl.
And then there's a place called the Minda Senior House, I think is what it's called. And this is one of the favorites of mine that I've just read about recently, which apparently, if you visit the house, some people claim to smell Italian food and they'll try to trace the scent to be like, oh, is someone cooking around here? And as they do, they'll hear distant sounds of like a dinner party, but then nothing will actually be there. That's original, haunting by sense of smell.
It's. You don't get that one a lot. Yeah, I'll get that little I. Know I have. I can't remember when I went to Bodie. I want to say it was like 2009 or something like that. I actually I just knew of it being a ghost town, meaning an abandoned town. I actually hadn't heard any of the ghost stories when I went. I did not feel anything. Again. I'm very skeptical of that stuff anyway, but I loved it like it was just such a fascinating place.
And I do think that that, you know, again, these places have a weird energy. There's a direction next to history. It's right there. You can touch it, you can see it, you can step on it. So I'm not surprised at all that people sense very strange things. Question like. Oh yeah. Yeah. Question for you is that is it the type that there's people working there and it's kind of place or do you just walk in and you're, you're the only person there kind. Of there are people that work there.
It's been so long I don't remember if there's like literally a hut with Rangers there, but I do know that Rangers work there and just doing some research for this episode, I found an interview with a Ranger, on site. So I don't know if she's there all the time. It was just sort of like doing a rounds and passing through, right? But she claimed she was like, I don't believe in ghosts.
But there are a couple things weird have happened to me here, and one of them is one of my first nights working here. I kept hearing someone call my name and no one was there. And it was like this very specific voice saying her name. Not just like a weird wind, you know, whispery sound. Interesting? Yeah. So there are people that work there. I just, I don't know if they're there or.
But it's not one of those where there's like shops in every, every building and that they're selling things out of there. All right. If I again, it's been so long since I could be I could be wrong. So listeners, if you know, please feel free to correct me, email me at the City of Strange at gmail.com. But I think there was a place you could buy stuff. I just don't remember if it was a converted old building or if they had built something. I sure don't remember.
There's this some that are more of like, you know, a carnival like calico has or, you know, like, there's an elevator definitely does. Yeah. In every place. And it's like, yeah, I'm not going to really be scared here, you know? But if you go, it sounds like this one's kind of in the middle where they had a little bit of that. But it's not just some dead town in the middle of nowhere. No, no. And it's because it's part of a state park. I do think they promote it.
They try to get people to come and visit it. It was relatively busy when I was there too. So it's not like you're not just I wish it was just me wandering around. Yeah. Or like there's other people that are camping somewhere nearby and families driving through and stuff. So there's a lot going on. But in terms of like just stories I've read of ghost towns being actually associated with some weird haunted stories. It's like the main one I come across.
So yeah, if anybody gets a chance to go, definitely do it. All right. So I'm going to shift gears for the next one. I'm going to go to Alabama, to a town called Riverton. And this one is a little different because primarily you think of ghost towns in the states being associated with the gold rush, rush or some other sort of mining rush type of situation. Riverton is different. It is a town that flooded because of a dam being built, and so it's now almost completely underwater.
And I came across this town to the reason I want to do included as a better way to say it. I came across an article called The Strange Death of Maggie Williams, who? Yeah, nice. And it was flooded in 1938 when the Pickwick Dam was built on the Tennessee River. So let's see, where do I want to start this story? Adam? Let me see. I'm going to I'll give some background and then I'll talk about Maggie Williams. That's the way I'll do this.
So prior to this town, being flooded, it was an important and strategic point in on the Tennessee River there during the Civil War, it was involved in numerous bombardments. It also had a few other names before it started to be called Riverton in the 1890s. And as the town was flooded, only one part of the town continued to be above water, and that is the cemetery, and I have actually toured the location on Google Maps using modern technology.
And. Really beautiful today, you never really realize there's like a town that got flooded there. The cemetery is still there. There is a church that's like a modern church. It's, you know, new and nice, and there's homes along the street and stuff. But the cemetery is definitely still there. And that's where we can tie in the story of Maggie Williams and story goes like this. In 1909, Maggie Williams was 15. She was playing at a friend's house, and she developed a headache.
She went home soon after that, and that night or the next morning, she fell into a coma. And then very quickly, they pronounced her dead. She had no heartbeat, no blood pressure. All the typical things of a person. Sadly. Dying. And now people who dress the body claimed very quickly that she looked alive. And I don't think they were doing they didn't sort of modern whatever they call it, when they preserved the body. There were different back then. Not quite as good as they are now.
But people said that she looked asleep. She didn't look dead. No. Rigor mortis started to set. Set in. And during the funeral of Maggie Williams, the coroner was so concerned that they may have messed up that he pricked her hand with a pen, but no blood came out. And then just also triple make sure he lit a match and held it under her hand and nothing happened. Wow. So it's like, okay, no, no, no, this is just weird. She is dead. So they closed the coffin and they buried her.
But later I can't find out how much later. But later hunters were in the area and it was at night, and they saw this strange light moving around Maggie's grave. And as they approach to find out what this was, the light lifted up and sort of moved to the top of the headstone before disappearing. Allegedly, over the years, more and more people have seen this strange light moving around her grave.
Some people have taken pictures of the grave, and they claim to see as the slight outline of a woman's face or girl's face. And also, apparently rose bushes won't grow on the ground. Now, I can't prove or disprove any of those alleged haunting things, but the story is real. I've looked up the grave site. I've looked at historical record of her dying. You can find all these things. I'll provide links to it in the show notes as well. And so? So she's real. It's a real story. She died at 15.
How real? Do you know? The lights and stuff. Alright, that very well might just be sort of local legend. Sure. But it's it's just a fascinating story. And one that I really, really enjoy for her. But yeah. Yeah. I love the image of this dead teenager getting a match lit under her hand to see if she's really dead. You know, that's pretty creepy. Beautiful image. You got to think about that time period. Still, it's a little past sort of the peak of of spiritualism and stuff in the country.
But people were still honestly, it was a slightly morbid time. This isn't long after people were taking photos of their dead relatives, like with them, and they dress them up and take a photo like they were still alive. And so it's just a fascinating time period in history and the relationship with the deceased was very different than it is now. It's a little more open. So it is as weird as it seems to have someone light a match, it kind of makes sense.
Like I don't think people would be like grossed out by it or anything. I think they'd be like, yeah, let's make sure she's really dead. Like, absolutely. Yeah. Let's see if she flinches or whatever. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and just a quick side note to the dancing lights. Have you done an episode on the Marfa Lights? Marfa in Texas? No. But here's the funny thing.
I have been reading about it since I started the podcast, and I have such a long episode lined up, and I've got to figure out a way to narrow it down because I'm tying it into other supposedly sites around the world that are similar. Yeah. What are you going to say about the Marfa Lights? So I've been there and I investigated. Really. That's going to tangent, but you got to tell me about it. I saw the lights, I investigated. We'll talk. Nice. Yeah. Nice. Well, now I'm very excited.
Yeah. You. When I have red lights, I literally have red like three books on the subject too. There's a guy that did a ton of investigation and he wrote a book, and then people apparently had a lot of opinions about his book. So he wrote a follow up book. Yeah, dude, it's a thing. People are passionate about it are out there. It's a really cool town, too, by the way. Very like worth going to great restaurants. Like museums, art. It's like a very artistic kind of town. Like, cool.
They're in the middle of nowhere. It's very alien vibes. Love a fun place to camp. And then. Yeah, there's a hole every night. There's a giant group on this rest stop where everybody gets together and you see them. I took a drive trying to figure it out, but, you know, we'll get into it now. All right. Well, I'm so excited. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So in terms of Riverton, I couldn't find a lot of other ghost stories, but that Maggie Williams story was so fascinating, I had to cover it.
I did find one other account that I can't find. You know, I can't find a historical record for this. But there's allegedly another local legend that there was a family that lived in Riverton, and the whole family was murdered by Union soldiers during the Civil War, except for a daughter and a young Native American girl that also lived with them. And the locals believe that those two escaped and went off into the mountains in the woods of the area and survived.
And then decades later, people say that they see a young, quote unquote quoting them, a young Indian girl and a young white girl sort of traversing through the hills in these sort of ghostly apparitions. So that's the only other sort of ghost story I could find for the area. That's cool. And that brings us to the third town we'll talk about today. And I might as well dive into Bannack, Montana, the place you have been to. How far away did you live growing up in Montana from Barnett boy?
I Montana's huge, by the way. People don't understand how vast of that. But, we are used to driving, you know, a couple hours to get anywhere. And I believe it was, I'm from the northwest. It was Whitefish, Glacier National Park area. I believe it was near the end before, on our eighth grade history trip, before we had to turn around and go back. So it's pretty far. I believe it's maybe four hours. Or so. Maybe three. Yeah. Cool. Do you. I don't want to put you on the spot.
If you don't want to do this, you don't have to. But do you remember much about Bannock? Do you want to share? Like what you remember or no. Of the town. I do, I remember, you know, I may have gone again after that just because, you know, being a fool and just loving horror and anything, you know, exciting. In Montana, there's, you know, not a lot to do. So you create your, your excitement.
So, but, I do remember that it's not like, Bodie, whereas there's, I feel like it's kind of more of a traditional small ghost town where it's like, like, Deadwood, where there's just kind of one little main street, maybe a couple. There was, like, maybe another little street. But most of the stuff, the church, the bar, and the main stuff you hear about the few three or 4 or 5 buildings are on kind of a main classic old Wild West little strip. And then I really.
Yeah, I think there's a couple more things down below. But yeah, it was gorgeous. It's kind of, in the middle of nowhere is is where in my head I remember. Yeah. And back then, and the last time I was there, it was. No one was there like, it was, it was, it was. Maybe we I can't remember if we had to drive through. It is a national park. Yeah. It that doesn't sound right for this. It literally is.
Maybe you have to drive through a place where maybe back then sometimes, maybe because we were a school there was a ranger there. But I guarantee there maybe now Montana is getting a lot more attention in the last few years, so maybe there is someone, but it was a place where you'd probably just drive right by, one of those little huts and nobody would be there. And you just go in and you'd be the only one there, and you walk in. You could walk into any building, walk around the town.
So it was a real, a very real version of, you know, getting, getting a ghost town experience where, I've been to calico and stuff, which I love. I love that, too. It's fun. But calico is more, you know, there's it's like an event. You pay, you walk in, there's tons of people in every place. This is literally you're just the. It is a ghost town as ghost town as ghost towns get. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, it looks from, just the things I've looked at online and stuff.
It does look like there are a number of buildings and stuff, because some ghost towns are more just like rubble. Sure. Yeah. It's like Bannock definitely still has some of the buildings and. Yes. And the things you said you liked about Bodie are, are there they they have you can walk in and there they kept it very much the way it was.
I'm not sure if they've done any renovations since, but it feels like a place that is just was left, and they've just preserved it in a way, without changing anything. Yeah. Which is very creepy. And all the haunting stuff makes it much more, you know, you feel those eyes, you know. For. Sure. Yeah, I I've got to find a new way to respond when I talk to people and we talk about something scary or weird, and I'm like, nice. Hahahahahahaha. No. I got to be careful.
But we love it. Yeah, we love it. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a part. I mean, that's the stuff. You know, I am a horror film art filmmaker to this day, and I always will be inspired by the unknown. And the darkness is that was in Montana. That was some of the most exciting stuff we got, you know, was, was to go to a place like that and to hear the stories and, you know, tell each other the stories.
And, and when we went, you know, there's a story that we'll probably get into of a of a crying baby or something. And, and sure enough, we, we went there and we heard it, but it was my dumb ass friend Adam Pittman, you know, good with and hired and and did it and, you know, scared the shit out of all of us. But, you know, those are the things that's. Yeah, that's our filmmaking that's still, you know, have to. Anyway. That's funny. So here I'll give a little background for people.
So the town was dusk. Sorry. It was founded in 1862 after the discovery of gold. It quickly went from. And yeah, it went from 0 to 400 residents within just a few months, apparently. And then a few months after that, it was 5000 people. And then it seems like a few months after that it was 10,000 people. Like that growth just makes my head explode. Yeah. And it was the it wasn't the Montana was not a state yet in Montana. It was just a territory.
And it was the first capital of the Montana Territory. Did you do you remember that at all? I did not know that. Yeah. That's cool. It did not last long. That was very short lived. But it was the first capital of the Montana Territory. And the town died out relatively quickly because the rich stuff began to, you know, disappear as happens. Also, it was known similar to Bodie. It was known for violence and greed and murder.
And I wrote this sentence, so I'll say it, even though I don't know if I like it, maybe a little too on the nose. But today, many believe the town is haunted. They even believe. Or they even believe they even host a Halloween party on Halloween. Nowadays, where people dress up and go hang out. Bodie for the night. Which I would absolutely do. Yeah, I've heard that's big. I've heard that's big. Yeah. So why do people claim it's haunted?
Well, obviously we've talked already today about the history of these kind of places, but also the outlaws in this place, have made it quite. I guess there's just notorious tales to tell. And the big one of this town that is real, very real story. You can look up is a guy named Henry Plummer. Does that name sound familiar? Do you remember hearing about this guy? Yeah, absolutely. So the town was so lawless and dangerous that it needed a sheriff, obviously. And Henry Plummer got the job.
However, he was a criminal himself. Yes. Of course. Quickly turned into being an outlaw. He led a gang of road agents and thieves. They robbed wagons. They were committing murder. No one knows quite how many people died at his hands or the hands of his gang, but some estimated to be over 100. They also apparently were killing people from Bannock all the way south into Utah. So their crime spree was, very wide. Traveled a lot of miles, I guess.
And Plummer and his men terrorized the region, and he soon was captured and without trial. Is the old West. He was just hung. He was hung and killed in town. Some of his men were lynched. And, of course, that kind of horrifying connection to a city. You would imagine that people say he haunts the place, and that is, in fact, what they say he does, that his spirit is still wandering
the streets of Bannack, Montana. Yes. And there's a specific connection I found, around the general store, which is one of the buildings that's still there. Apparently, people it's one of those places people hear disembodied voices. And a lot of people, I assume, I guess is a good way to put it. They assume it's Henry Plummer talking and stuff, and it's it's sort of his energy reliving the day that he's being dragged out and hung. I think he was killed near by the general store.
It's why they say that another creepy account of the town is the Bessette house. I don't know if I'm saying that. Right. And this is a hot spot of paranormal activity, which involves. This is the ghost kids, and probably where the baby crying comes in. Yeah. The original owner of the home used it as a quarantine or like, a children's hospital. So I think they had some births. They had sick babies, they had sick kids that they would take care of.
We don't know how many kids died there, but probably a lot. It is the 19th century. So, there's probably a lot of that. And so there's a lot of strange anomalies. And again, baby crying. Although I guess your friend isn't there right now. So if you visited her, baby's crying. It's not Adam's friend anymore. I don't know, he only lives like, three hours away. Okay. It's probably they're. Making. The noise. And then another spirit hanging around town is Dorothy Dunn.
And this is the daughter of the hotel, the hotel's manager there in the town. And she's often seen on the property in a blue dress. And quite often her voice is heard talking to people, specifically talking to children that are visiting the town. And so, like I do, I've tried to look up like, okay, where are these stories coming from? What can I find out? That's real? Dorothy Dunn's story and all these little things I did are definitely real.
Like the that house was used as a hospital or sort of doctor's office for children. Dorothy Dunn is very real. And there are a lot of newspaper articles you can actually look up and read about her. She died drowning near the town in 1916. And I will have you read one of the newspaper articles. So that's number three in that thing I see. When you're ready. Dorothy Dunn overcome in swimming hole near Bannock. Bravery of young boy saves two companions of Miss Dunn after hard struggle.
A most deplorable accident occurred at 2:00 last Friday when Dorothy Dunn, a 16 year old girl, met her death by drowning. And had it not been for the bravery of Smith Paddock, a 12 year old boy, Ruth Warnick and Fern Dunn would have met the same fate. The three girls had gone to Grasshopper Creek to wade and bathe in the creek. They waited out into a hole dug out by the old dredging boats, not realizing their danger. Suddenly, all three stepped off the ledge into nine feet of water.
Yes, so poor Dorothy Dunn died. They had her funeral. They, you know, announced it in all the papers, the local papers. And people turned out, not only was her dad the manager of the hotel, but I think her uncle owned a ton of the property in the area. And this is after, like, the town was already sort of like a smaller population, but people are still there wasn't quite a ghost town yet. So it's a very sad story. So obviously her, her connection to this area is runs deep and I don't know why.
Or at least I can't find out why. There's a blue dress, because people claim that they see this apparition wearing a blue dress in the hotel. I couldn't find reason for that. I don't think she was wearing a blue dress when she died. I think she was wearing sort of that early 20th century bathing suit, which is like a dark black dress, probably. Right. But people claim this, this blue dress apparition, and it must be Dorothy's. And she sadly passed away in the area. Yeah. So that is that's panic.
Yeah. Yeah. And I've heard, I've heard that the that children or the ones that often see that which I always find interesting and creepy and it makes sense because a lot of times you'll be with a kid and you know, if we saw something, we might not even pay attention. But like a, you know, a child, they're going to speak up and. Yeah. Yeah. And also people, you know, claim that children are a little more open to these kinds of things. I absolutely like to see these things.
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of interesting now that you say there's a lot of interesting children connections with all the Bannock stories, because. Yeah, that other house with the disembodied voices in the hospital. That's really interesting.
Well, also, it's cool where the blue dress comes in, like, whether it's her or not is like when there's a specific detail like that, you know, like, if somebody says that, if a kid says it, if if it keeps coming up, there's just there's something about that to me that, you know, lends more to the possibility that if two completely different people who have not been here and don't know each other, they see someone in a blue dress, that's a detail that's, you know, can help
with the with the proof that absolutely, they're saying something similar. Couple fun things real quickly about, our boy, what what's his name? The, Plumber. Plumber. Yeah. So, Yeah. So he the the name of his, his clan, I believe, was the innocence, which I. Yeah. Yeah, that's. And really fucking cool. I mean, sorry, sorry. But, you could cut that out. But, I thought that was awesome. And there.
Yeah, apparently, in that town, and, you know, you never know if it's true or not, but that, like, 22 of them were, like, hung like, or something crazy, like, oh, which is a lot of death at the same time. Yeah. And then even crazier. And I don't know if this is true, but apparently and they told us this when, when we were there, which as a kid in eighth grade was pretty awesome.
But, and actually speaks to what we were all up to in Montana, even back in the day, I would have never done this, but it speaks to the mischief anyway, his grave was robbed twice, and the second time his head was taken and putting in the bar, and it sat in the bar for a while because that was the place he loved. And, I don't know why, but that's that's a story that I've that. That is that's a fascinating story. And honestly, I'm upset with myself for not having put that into today's episode.
We got to. Wrap that up. Thank God so much for that. That is. That is. Amazing. Would walk into a bar and if you just saw a head back, just who knows what state it was in. I was about to say, I wonder what state it was in. And did they, like, preserve it in formaldehyde or something? Or was it just this decomposed skeletal remains? You know. Every everyone who's listening, their imagination can do the work. That's what's beautiful about it. That's insane. Yeah, I did it.
I didn't write a ton about his gang because there's so many different tales about how many of them were hung. How many? Yeah. How many? Like, it's one of those very much those old west west tales where it's like 150 of his friends were shot in the street and or. No, it's 15 of them were. Oh, yeah. We've heard so nice. Yeah. Well, in Montana, like, even when beyond just being there, we've heard so many tales about him. He was he's definitely one of those guys. Yes.
Well, I'm going to shift gears because this other, this next place has such a very different background in history to it. It is Wonder Valley, California. Have you ever heard of Wonder Valley? No, but that sounds great. Yeah. So this is I, I had to put it, you know, the algorithm that we live in, in an age of algorithms, I can't say I can't make the title four of the Most Haunted, ghost Towns. And one interesting one, I got to say, five of the most haunted ghost towns. This place.
There are claims that it's haunted, but I don't have many details about why, but it's so, I'm fascinated by the story, and I don't even know why, so I had to put it on the list. Wonder Valley is in the Mojave Desert in the Mojave is full of odd places, odd communities, odd people. And one such place is Wonder Valley. Now, unlike Bodie and Bannack, which succumb to the gold rush there, the boom and bust of the gold rush, I should say Wonder Valley is a modern ghost town.
Its story, in short, is that of a budding community that was quickly abandoned in the middle of the 20th century. And what happened in this once promising town, and what ghost might still haunt in its forgotten. Post, begins. In the 1950s, the United States government sought to encourage homesteading and land development in California's high desert through the small tract Act. That is Really Hard to Say and Small Tract Act of 1938.
Individuals could claim five acre plots of land for free, as long as they promise to improve the land by building a structure, and this prompted a rush of hopeful settlers, which were primarily artists and veterans. Retirees, I'll call them just hippies before the hippie movement, and they all moved into this area to claim land and build homes. And initially, the community seemed full of promise. There were simple cabins, often not larger than a single room.
These cabins affectionately were called jackrabbit homesteads because there were a lot of jackrabbits in the area, and by the 1960s, Wonder Valley had a small but vibrant community full of individuals. Must share this with true cherished solitude. Man, talking today is tough. You're on a good episode. You get to hear me messed up a lot. They they wanted their independence in this town, and they wanted to live in the beauty of the desert. And, yeah, I just, you know,
it's these hippies right before the the peak of the hippie movement. Yes. And have you ever spent much time in sort of the desert of. Oh, Vernon, Nevada. Yeah. I love it. And, honestly, being from the woods of Montana, it's it it's similar in the fact of. Yeah, it it's it's a brutal place to like the weather can be brutal. You are kind of in the middle nowhere. And very interesting folks end up, in those places.
The, the most interesting folks I've ever come across in my entire life are in desert communities in this area. And it's weird. It's this weird, like, you think, oh, hippies, free love hippies. But then they also carry ak47s as a well, shoot you if you get on their property. There's a survival aspect. There's a, in Montana, I always say it's kind of the furthest north you people could. We're trying to get away from things before having. I lived in our south of the Montana border.
So a lot of these places are places where people are going to that don't necessarily want to abide by the normal rules. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And there's like I've been to I it's always work. That's like that's when I travel the most. And it's like film projects where we're filming and doing documentary stuff and it'll be places where it's like a nudist colony that's literally not on the map, and there's no registration for it.
But yet people live there full time and, yeah, it's it's some crazy, crazy people. And and it's honestly, it's just very fascinating. Which is probably why I wanted to do this story. Yes. And so what happened to Wonder Valley is that this novelty of isolation began to wear off within, like the first ten years of it being settled, because it it is very harsh. It is very hard to live in the middle of the desert with limited resources and economic hardship. And so people started to move away.
And by the 70s there were very few people left. And then by the 80s, essentially the homesteads had been abandoned and it's just left there. And the ghost town that remains today is one of, I'm going to call it, contrasts. I wrote down in my notes, like rows of cabins, deserted cabins, and then stunning beauty behind it. So it's like decomposing homes and the beauty of the Mojave landscape. And the reason I put it on this list is people do visit it.
You know, there are people that travel and want to go to all these odd places in the desert, and when they go, it's primarily voices in the wind is what I kept reading about. So people will be wandering around these old homesteads window blow, and they'll start to hear their name or words or people, which sounds like people talking, and they'll get freaked out and get that feeling of being watched, like we've talked about so many times today.
And and those are the main stories of this, odd place of Wonder Valley, California. The Hills Have eyes. It's very. Have eyes. Yeah. Yeah. And the I mean, the wind really does whip in those places, and that's a great one because you can hear, you know, inside of the wind if you if you convince yourself you can hear a lot. Yeah, yeah. You can't really the wind is I, I'm always fascinated with the wind because it can create what you think are voices.
And and that's not to just completely say I'm debunking all these haunted stories of the town. Sure, sure. It's just to say that the wind does play really interesting tricks on your mind. Especially in the desert. Yeah. And, and it it's super creepy. It's super creepy. That's a great one. I need to check that town out. Yeah. I should have. Looked at it. Yeah, I should have looked at how far away it is from us in LA. I don't think it's that terrible of a drive.
Yeah, the Mojave hits. Yeah. I mean, there's so much interesting. That's an interesting road trip. Yeah. Cool. All right, so my last one today, our fifth haunted town. I'm doing this for you. I picked another Montana town that I actually don't know much about. Garnet Montana. I've heard you name. I've heard the name. All right. I just came across this just being like I should find another Montana town for freedom. Cool. So, Garnet, Montana, there are many remaining structures and people.
There aren't many, many people. There's people visiting my. Garnet is in the mountains of Granite County, Montana. Do you know where that is? Boy? I'm looking. I looked it up yesterday, and now I don't remember exactly where I think it's southwest. Is it southwest? It is. Yeah. No, it's right kind of where I'm from. Oh, nice. Nice. Yeah. It's in the north. Kind of northwest, right outside the Flathead Reservation, which is where I'm from. Swaim.
So it's in it lies in a place called First Chance Gulch. And the. It's it's an interesting town, because from what I can tell, it wasn't necessarily a boom town from the gold rush. It was more of a town that started to develop because of people in surrounding areas finding minerals and gold. And this was like a central place that they would go to. Because it had let me see, what was it called?
It was a machine that would like grind the stone and stuff, so people would come there and get their, their minerals processed. I don't know the right term. I'm not a miner so I don't, but I think everybody kind of follows my idea. Oh it's a stamp mill, stamp mill. And that was built in 1895. And so a little town popped up with that stamp mill in 1897 and that is Garnet, Montana. In 1898. The population was around a thousand by 1900, though it was only 300 people.
So this town quickly popped up with a population and then very quickly diminished in size. But the town became a ghost town twice, so it essentially right after 1900, became a ghost town. And then in 1934, gold prices rose and miners returned to this area because they wanted to to try to harvest more gold out of the ground. And then World War Two happened and the cost of mining increased because of all that. So by 1940, the town was a bust again.
So it became a ghost town twice, which is incredibly fascinating. That's cool. People come and visit. Apparently thousands of visitors come to, you know, like you do at ghost towns. You come and visit, you want to check it out and see the old places. And with that comes ghost stories. And one of the ones I found here is that Kelly's Saloon, a saloon there, which was built in 1898. It was one of the most popular saloons out of the handful that were built in the town.
It was also a brothel, and if you're stay after dark, visitors claim that you can hear music and the sound of like clinking glasses and saloon drinkers laughing and talking at the bar. There's also the Wells Hotel. I don't believe this is still stand. I think it's partly still standing, and it's believed that a lot of guests died in this hotel, and light from the windows can be seen at night, and sometimes an apparition or figure standing in the window.
And then when people go up, there's there's no one there. One of the best parts about this is there a cabins for rent in Garnet, Montana? Yeah. So you have the courage to stay there? I would absolutely do it. You can go and stay in town. So that is my my. Awesome. Yeah, I totally know where this is. It's just west of Missoula, which is, Oh, yeah. Where a University of Montana is a little town. There's great concerts there in the summer and stuff.
So if you want to check that out and then go over to Garnet, it's I remember now seeing there's a, off the highway there, highway 90, I believe, or the one that goes to Seeley Lake. I know what it's called, but there's definitely signs it's a little more like calico, where it's a little more of, you know. Touristy. A touristy kind of. I mean, as far as I could tell from the sign. And then that they have places you can stay, which is really, really cool.
Yeah. But I now remember seeing the sign and wanting to go, but I don't think I have ever gone. Yeah, that's that's really cool. Well, yeah. And if listeners, if anybody has a ghost town, you want me to cover that I didn't. Or one you think is way more haunted, or even one you've been to that you've experienced something, please email me a study of strange at gmail.com. We'll do a follow up. Even happy to have someone come on to talk about their experience in these places.
Like I've said too many times today, I'm so fascinated with ghost towns, and I'm glad I found a way to do it. I, you know, I typically do deep dives, but I was like, no, I'll do a listicle about ghost towns because I just I love ghost towns and I want to talk about them and visit them all. So yeah. And that's such a fun thing because you put a number of them in there and people listening could go, that one's near me. Let's go check it out. Absolutely. Yeah. You should. They're really worth it.
Whether you're into spooky things or not, just from a historical perspective. I love going to them. And I've been to so many of them in California that I just I'm always fascinated. I'm the nerdy guy wandering around being like, oh. My God, look at that. That's the original wall for me to do. And just geeking out about little things like that. Yeah. Are there, do you know of any are there any ghost towns you've been to that I didn't mention? If they will be haunted, but, you know. Yeah.
I mean, you know, calico, we've mentioned a couple times, which is out in the desert and it's, it's a it's a super fun time. And it's very commercialized, but it's it's really fun. It's calico, the one that someone bought it and they've been restoring it like one guy that, like, lives out. Maybe like a maybe. I mean, it's pretty. It's it's it's an attraction, you know, and it's pretty big. And you pay to go in and you walk up and down the street, but it's really cool, very, very, very fun.
And they keep things real nice and clean there. And they apparently. Yeah, they I asked if they do a Halloween like time scary version and they said, yeah. So, that could be really interesting. And they do have little huts that you can rent and, and, and stand nearby and camping nearby. Which is cool. And then in Montana, there's a couple Virginia City and Nevada City are right next to each other, and they're a little they're a little more, a little more commercial.
But, Nevada City is actually just they've moved a lot of old buildings there. You would love it. Like they've restored and they have tons of old buildings. Not all of them were just there. So it's less like a ghost town and more like a historical monument. They've shot movies. They're old Westerns and stuff. And then Virginia City nearby is, a little. It's it's a little less, commercialized than a native city, but there's like a cool old bar there and stuff.
It's a it's a good time. Very interesting. But, yeah, Bannock is the main creepy one that I, that I know of. And then, Yeah. Very cool. Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Adam was. Super fun. Yeah. And. Yeah, I want to talk to you about the Marfa lights. So maybe. You. Know, circle back to. That. I have to do an episode of the Marfa Lights, and I'll. I'll dive into my research again on that. Well, either way, I'll give you a I'll give you my my low down and.
Yeah. Please do. Yeah. That's awesome. And before you go, do you mind sharing where people might find your work, where people want to find you? Is there anything you want to, you know, promote or push or send people towards before you go? Yeah. I mean, Instagram, it's still well, underscore Adam. Or you could just type in Adam still, I'll probably pop up, Twitter, which I barely is, is you can type my name and see if I pop up, but it's pretty much Instagram.
And then, like I said before, if you want to see the free fall, it's on, two days and that's. Yeah. Well, thank you again. I'll talk to you soon. Awesome. Thanks, brother. Thank you for joining a study of strange. Support the show by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts and get access to additional mysterious, strange content by subscribing to our Substack, which you can find on our website. The study of strange.com in the support tab. Thank you again and good night.