I, myself, have never experienced a ghost. I’ve looked for ghosts. When my sister died when she was only 22 years old, I looked for signs everywhere that she was still around. And there were signs, I think. There were dreams. There was the fact that ever since she died, I always happen to look at the clock at 9:23 either AM or PM every single day. Her birthday was 9/23. But that was a coincidence, not a ghost. She loved daisies. Daisies appear everywhere in my world now. Certain songs like “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver or “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s seem to randomly play in public places way more often than they should. Those songs were two of her favorites. One of my favorites, “Landslide” the version by the Chicks also starts playing in different places so often. That is my favorite song, and I heard it for the first time right after I learned of my sister’s death. I’ve also had vivid dreams of my sister. All of these might be signs of her presence, but I can’t say I’ve ever actually seen a ghost.
I started working as a docent at our local historic house museum three summers ago. I grew up visiting that place on field trips for school, and now I only live a few blocks away, and I’ve always been drawn back to that place. I started working there as a tour guide during the summertime to bring in a little extra cash while my husband and I (both public school teachers) are working hard to get our daughter through college debt free. We’re almost there. I also loved the Mansion, so working there didn’t seem like a real job. I just felt lucky to get to hang out there.
One weekend a month during the summer, I fill in as the weekend manager to give the regular weekend manager a little break. That means I open and close the Mansion, usually meaning I am alone in the house for a bit in the morning and again after the guides go home in the afternoon. There have historically been ghost sightings by people who have been in the Mansion, but again, I have never experienced them even when I’ve been alone in the house. I do find myself talking to myself out loud when I open and close the Mansion, almost like I’m talking to the ghosts, walking myself through all the procedures to make sure I don’t forget anything. I never talk to myself out loud at home, but maybe I just do that at the Mansion because I’m worried I’ll forget a step or something. Or maybe, I just want the ghosts to know that I’m getting everything done.
This weekend I was the manager at the Mansion, and it was a very busy day on Sunday. It poured rain in the morning and rained off and on all day. Many tourists who were in the area to visit Glacier Park decided to come to the Mansion instead on that day to stay out of the bad weather. Everything had been running smoothly. There were two young guides working with me that day, and the three of us were keeping up with everything, even with a bus tour and large groups of people coming in for regular guided or self-guided tours.
At one point, at the end of a guided tour, a guy pulled me aside and asked how long I had worked at the Mansion. I told him that it was my third summer. He said, “Are there ghosts here?”
I said, “I have never seen one, but many others have had experiences.”
He said, “A little girl has been following me through the Mansion tugging on my pant leg. When I turn around, she giggles and then runs away.”
I said, “Did she have sausage curls in her hair?”
His eyes lit up, and he said, “Yes!”
I said, “That was little Alicia (the youngest daughter of the Conrads).”
He then asked, “Did any of the Conrad men smoke cigars? I smelled cigar smoke in the ‘Teddy Roosevelt Room’ (actually called the Antique Room).”
I said, that is one thing that others have said that they’ve experienced – cigar smoke or the smell of burning toast in the house.
He then told me he had been injured while he was in the military and had died for a moment on the operating table. He said that ever since that happened, he has had these sensitivities and has experienced many of these kinds of encounters. He said he got the sense that little Alicia was there because she could not let go of the house. (This makes sense according to the history surrounding Alicia’s dedication to the house. Some called it an obsession.) He also said that the father Charles Conrad was also there, but that he and Alicia were the only two still in the house. The mother was no longer there.
The entire conversation gave me goosebumps. We had this conversation in whispered voices off to the side of the larger group (probably to avoid sounding insane to people). I want you to meet “my girl” he said. “She needs to hear all of this.” He introduced me to his girlfriend, and she said that this kind of thing happens to him all the time. She said he kept turning around during the tour because someone was pulling on his pantleg. I asked him to please email the director of the Mansion with his story because it was the most detailed one I had ever heard, and she might like to use his story on the haunted ghost tours in October if he didn’t mind. He said he would absolutely do that, and his girlfriend was cute and said she would make sure he remembers to do it.
This young couple was from Chicago and had no connection with this Mansion in Montana and had no knowledge of its history or any of the local folklore surrounding the place. I guess you can tell that I believed his story.
The day before, when I had been managing the Mansion, a young lady on a self-guided tour along with a friend randomly asked me if there were ghosts in the house. I told her that some people have had experiences. She said something had brushed by her when she was up on the second floor. She said it gave her goosebumps and startled her. Her friend agreed that she could see the anxiety on her friend’s face when it happened. After that experience, she was ready to end her tour and leave the house.
The closest I have ever come to experiencing a ghost at the Mansion turned out to not be a ghost after all. I was giving a tour of the Mansion last summer, and some of my relatives came on the tour. They took a picture of me giving the tour while we were in the library. I posted that picture on Facebook in the evening, and one of my friends commented and circled a place on the picture and said, “It looks like you have spirits in your picture.” Sure enough, it looked like a face behind me. It looked like Alicia’s face with her wedding bonnet on her head. There was a picture just like that of her in the Mansion! I finally had my first ghost sighting! Alicia had photobombed me. I was so excited. I showed it to the Mansion director. She agreed that it looked like a face and asked me to send it to her to use on the ghost tours. I showed it to other guides, even the one that has worked there forever and says there are absolutely not ghosts at the Mansion could not deny that it looked like a face in that picture. But, the next day I was working that same shift. The next day I was in the library at the same time. I noticed that face again behind me in the dining room on the gray fireplace. I saw the sun streaming through the window, and I saw a shadow cast through the fireirons that looked just like a face. Debunked. It wasn’t a ghost after all. Just a shadow that very much resembled a face. Bummer.
I do believe in ghosts. I’ve just never seen one, but I know a lot of people who have. Maybe I just don’t have the sensitivity to it that others do, and that is probably fine. I don’t know how I’d feel about having a ghostly encounter while I’m alone at the Mansion.
My husband had an experience once. A ghost walked through him while we were at Hampton Court (Henry the Eighth’s) castle in London. My husband was alone in a stairwell when it happened. He said he felt very cold and froze in place for a minute. He didn’t believe in ghosts before that. But when we got home, he Googled his experience, and other people had had the same thing happen. Many believed it to be one of Henry VIII’s wives. I can’t remember which one.
My mom didn’t have a ghostly encounter, but she did have a dream that was a premonition. She had a vivid dream that the police came to the house to tell her that my sister had died. In the dream, the police came to the front door but couldn’t come in that way because the front steps were missing, so they had to enter through the laundry room. This dream woke my mom up in a panic, and she was so relieved that it was just a dream. A few weeks later, the police really did come to the house to tell her my sister had died. When they got to the house, they couldn’t come through the front door because my stepdad was rebuilding the front steps that day, so the steps were missing and the officers had to come in through the laundry room. As my mom was walking through the laundry room to let them in, she remembered her dream. Before the police could say anything, my mom said, “It’s Jen, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the officer said quietly.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” my mom sobbed.
“Yes, ma’am,” the officer said, “I’m so sorry.”
My mother’s mom, my grandma, once told me of an experience she had. She said that after her mom died, she came and sat on the edge of my grandma’s bed to comfort her.
My grandpa also had an experience on the operating table when he almost died after being shot when he was in the military. He saw and felt the lights of heaven and remembered floating above his body and seeing himself on the operating table. He said he was drawn to the light and wanted to go to it so badly, but he couldn’t, and suddenly he was pulled back down onto the operating table and back into the world as we all know it, but he never forgot that experience and how it felt.
So, I guess supernatural experiences may run in my family. It just appears to have skipped me so far, but you know, I might be just fine with that. But I definitely do believe in ghosts. There is something more out there that cannot be explained satisfactorily to me so far.
