Upside Down Under: Haunted North Dakota...

We’ve all heard the creepy, campfire stories that scare us out of our wits. But there are actually documented accounts of the unexplained happening in various parts of our state. You can choose to believe it or not, but the people who tell these stories are quite serious.

For instance, during Prohibition, tunnels underneath Minot were basically a haven for bootlegged booze and speakeasies. There was also crime in those tunnels because there was a lot of money changing hands.

It is said that several people were killed while crimes were committed and those people are now haunting those tunnels. Do you want to go down there and see for yourself?

Another Minot story is with the old Vegas Hotel. Apparently, a man who had an extended stay there saw things that can’t be explained. He chalked it up to being sick and his brain wasn’t thinking properly. But after talking to several employees, he became convinced something wasn’t right.

That hotel has changed hands numerous times over the years and in its defense, thousands of guests have stayed there and dined in the restaurant and haven’t reported anything unusual.

Evidently, the Billings County Courthouse in Medora is haunted. There’s a bookshelf that is located in an office and it runs around the top of the ceiling. Someone was standing in a doorway one day, chatting with a friend when all of a sudden, two huge books fell right where she was standing.

There was no earthquake, there was no tornado, the train wasn’t rolling through town at a high rate of speed. Nobody could come up with a logical explanation why those books fell off the shelf.

Some of you might remember San Haven? That was the sanitorium located just north of Dunseith. It operated for many years and was closed in the 1980s? Back in its early days it was a hospital for tuberculosis patients.

Unfortunately, some of those patients died while living in San Haven, and according to some people who have trespassed there, those people are still “living” there and haunting anyone who might try to steal any archives that might still be there.

Perhaps the most well-known haunted house in the state is the Custer House at Fort Lincoln, south of Mandan. People talk about seeing Union Soldiers wandering around, drums beating in the middle of the night, gates that would mysteriously open and close for no apparent reason and women dressed in 1870s clothing walking around the campus.

Trollwood Park in Fargo is supposed to be haunted, but there really aren’t any people to collaborate that story. Another is the Plains Art Museum in Fargo. Apparently, consistent weird activity has been happening there for many years.

There are allegedly numerous other places across the state that are haunted for various reasons. The wind tunnel at the University of North Dakota that leads to the west dorm of Wilkerson Hall is one of them. It is said a female student froze to death there in the 1960s and she is sometimes seen in the tunnel, especially at night.

A hospital in Dickinson, an old hospital in Jamestown, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad bridge in Bismarck, the area where the Emmons County Courthouse was once located in Williamsport, the Conklin House near Rolla and the bar in Sawyer are all supposed to be haunted.

One of the stories that has some credibility is that of the Spicer family from the Winona area of Em-mons County. The entire family was murdered there in the 1890s and it is said members of that family can still be seen wandering around the property they owned near present-day Strasburg and Fort Yates.

There are also numerous stories about people who have seen UFOs. These aren’t haunted stories, but seeing something like that has the equivalence of being just as scary. That’s a story for another day, but in the meantime, if you see something that can’t be explained, just know you aren’t alone.

(Marvin Baker is a news writer for the Kenmare News and formerly Foster County Independent.)