Ghost Hunting at Wyoming's Fort Caspar

Twice a year, in October and April, Wyoming's Fort Casper allows ghost hunters to investigate paranormal happenings at the 162-year-old fort.

DK
Dale Killingbeck

April 28, 20248 min read

A group uses paranormal detection technology to tour various areas around historic Fort Caspar.
A group uses paranormal detection technology to tour various areas around historic Fort Caspar. (Fort Caspar Museum via Facebook)

FORT CASPAR — Strange things have been known to happen on the 57 acres of the historic — and if you believe in ghosts, very haunted — Fort Caspar Museum grounds.

An impossibly blocked door, footsteps of hobnailed boots that echo through an empty museum, a little boy in suspenders who ran past a staffer and seemingly vanished.

Such are the occurrences that museum staff have come to accept at the historic site where thousands of westward pilgrims and soldiers once passed through. It’s also where lives were lost in battle, people drowned and succumbed to disease.

Every once in awhile, the museum opens after hours for those who don’t believe in ghosts — and those who do — to use science, technology and their natural instincts to snoop to investigate the paranormal activity at Fort Caspar. This weekend is one of those once-in-a-whiles.

“Much like you see on those ghost hunting shows, there is a variety of equipment that we use that participants are allowed to use themselves searching for possible paranormal activity,” Museum Director Rick Young told Cowboy State Daily.

The museum typically schedules paranormal investigations each October and April when the tourist season plexiglass barriers are removed from inside fort buildings. Visitors can play checkers on a table and challenge an invisible opponent in the enlisted quarters bunkhouse. They can also watch for a paranormal detection device in the telegraph room to light up.

The Tools

People buy tickets and go out in 10-member groups and investigate three areas of the property. Each group is given a bag of professional paranormal “tools.” The object of hour-long excursion revolves around seeing if a “spirit box” will talk, divining rods move, lasers detect movement, or an electro-magnetic field detector will light up with contact from the beyond.

Fort Caspar Museum Association Vice President Johanna Wickman explained the tools. One is an EMF detector that picks up fluctuations in electromagnetic fields. While it will detect electronics, she said paranormal investigators use it to ferret out potential activity if electronics are absent.

Another tool is the REM-POD which picks up temperature fluctuations as well as disturbances in the electro-magnetic field.

“We have a couple of them that we will set up in buildings,” Wickman said, adding she has left two of them set up overnight in the cavalry barracks with a video camera on and “these things just start going off by themselves.”

“There is nobody in the building, there is no electrical, there is no reason for it,” she said. “These are usually pretty active in the telegraph office and in the cavalry barracks.”

The teams will also be given laser thermometers to determine temperature fluctuations in a room or outdoors because paranormal activity is associated with cold spots. The tool bag also will have audio recorders team members can carry around because “sometimes the audio recorders will pick up sounds that you can’t hear with the human ear,” Wickman said.

“We’ve heard footsteps, voices, unusual things on the audio files,” she said.

  • This screenshot from a 30-minute video shows infrared football from the Fort Caspar cavalry barracks. The paranormal detection devices on the tables are triggered multiple times.
    This screenshot from a 30-minute video shows infrared football from the Fort Caspar cavalry barracks. The paranormal detection devices on the tables are triggered multiple times. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
  • A group uses paranormal detection technology to tour various areas around historic Fort Caspar.
    A group uses paranormal detection technology to tour various areas around historic Fort Caspar. (Fort Caspar Museum via Facebook)
  • The Fort Caspar Museum offers paranormal investigators these tools to investigate the grounds.
    The Fort Caspar Museum offers paranormal investigators these tools to investigate the grounds. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
  • The Fort Caspar Museum offers paranormal investigators devices that show strange activity on the ground include in the REM-POD which detects temperature changes and electro-magnetic activity and a “spirit box” that scans radio frequencies at high speeds.
    The Fort Caspar Museum offers paranormal investigators devices that show strange activity on the ground include in the REM-POD which detects temperature changes and electro-magnetic activity and a “spirit box” that scans radio frequencies at high speeds. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
  • The Fort Caspar Museum offers paranormal investigators devices that show strange activity on the ground include in the REM-POD which detects temperature changes and electro-magnetic activity and a “spirit box” that scans radio frequencies at high speeds.
    The Fort Caspar Museum offers paranormal investigators devices that show strange activity on the ground include in the REM-POD which detects temperature changes and electro-magnetic activity and a “spirit box” that scans radio frequencies at high speeds. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)

Names Spoken

Young tells of one instance when on playback, the recorder “said people’s names that were present, which was pretty odd.”

Another oddity occurred when Wickman left a video camera in the cavalry barracks.

“We’ve let it run overnight in the cav(alry) barracks and picked up those hobnailed boots … and you could hear it clicking on the wood floor … walking away from the camera and toward the camera,” she said. “On one of the recordings we heard someone say ‘Hello’ right in the camera, which is weird.”

She said it was 3 a.m. when one was at the fort.

Other paranormal gear teams can use is a “spirit box,” which scans radio frequencies at a high rate of speed and creates a white noise paranormal investigators have used to hear names and voices.

“These are pretty popular on tours,” Wickman said. “These are things where we have heard someone come through and say names and they can speak to you essentially.”

Another tool is a laser grid light that indicates if something breaks the laser grid pattern. Teams also are given dousing rods that once were used to find water. These are good for asking “yes” or “no” questions,” Wickman said.

A board for checkers in the barracks is set up to see what happens when someone makes a move and challenges the spirits to make the next.

‘Something Happens’

“We have a lot of people come back every year because they say something happens,” she said.

A few years ago, Wickman said the museum invited Sarah Lemos, a well-known ghost hunter on the Travel Channel, who came and did a special investigation at Fort Caspar.

“She commented that this location from her perspective was a ‘Class A haunted location,’ meaning that it is extremely active,” Wickman said. “She was blown away that she was on these tours and there was something happening on every tour.”

Additional strange events at the fort encountered by staff have included:

  • Wickman said she saw a boy in the museum when they were doing paranormal tours years ago run past her wearing a button-up plaid shirt, suspenders and pants that were “a little out of place for the T-shirts you would expect to see, but not necessarily out of time.” She went after him into the museum and could find no one. There was only one way out of the gallery where people were standing, and she asked if they saw him. They had not. Others later reported seeing a boy with the same sandy hair over by the Sutler Store, a building in the fort complex outside of the museum.
  • Michelle Bahe, curator of collections, said she was doing her regular cleaning of 8-by-6-foot sheets of glass in the museum that protect exhibits and one day found a little kid’s handprints on the inside of the glass. The exhibit had been up since November, she was cleaning the glass in August, and it was the first time she saw the handprints. And there was no way for a child to get behind the glass.
  • Young said a few years back he went to open the Sutler Store door in the fort, and it was blocked by a heavy chair. The door to the building opens to the inside. Windows in the building are nailed shut. The door is the only entrance. There was no logical explanation for how the chair blocked the door.
  • On another occasion a few years ago, Young and two other employees, including Bahe, walked into one of the fort buildings to find wet barefoot footprints in the middle of a room that walked into another room and stopped. There were no footprints leading into the room from outside — they just started in the middle of a room. No security motion detectors had been set off.
  • Young said during a paranormal tour a few years ago that Museum Association President Con Trumbell was playing checkers in the cavalry barracks. He made an illegal move and a voice came through the spirit box: “You cheated, Con.” “I can’t explain that,” Young said.
  • Historian and Fort Caspar Museum Association Vice President Johanna Wickman shares about the strange occurrences that have occurred in the cavalry barracks.
    Historian and Fort Caspar Museum Association Vice President Johanna Wickman shares about the strange occurrences that have occurred in the cavalry barracks. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
  • A group uses paranormal detection technology to tour various areas around historic Fort Caspar.
    A group uses paranormal detection technology to tour various areas around historic Fort Caspar. (Fort Caspar Museum via Facebook)
  • The Fort Caspar Museum opens up its grounds for paranormal investigations twice a year in the spring and fall.
    The Fort Caspar Museum opens up its grounds for paranormal investigations twice a year in the spring and fall. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
  • Sounds of hobnailed boots, bare wet footprints that start in the middle of a room, and a building entrance blocked by a chair are some of the stories Fort Caspar Museum staff share about the historic fort and its replica buildings.
    Sounds of hobnailed boots, bare wet footprints that start in the middle of a room, and a building entrance blocked by a chair are some of the stories Fort Caspar Museum staff share about the historic fort and its replica buildings. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
  • Museum Director Rick Young a few years ago found this chair blocking this door in the Sutler Store with no explanation for how it got there. The door opens in and is the only entrance. Windows are nailed shut from the inside.
    Museum Director Rick Young a few years ago found this chair blocking this door in the Sutler Store with no explanation for how it got there. The door opens in and is the only entrance. Windows are nailed shut from the inside. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
  • Fort Caspar ghost tour Sutler Store 4 28 24
    (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
  • Activity on the grounds at Fort Caspar along the banks of North Platte River sometimes trigger paranormal devices and lead to hard-to-explain occurrences.
    Activity on the grounds at Fort Caspar along the banks of North Platte River sometimes trigger paranormal devices and lead to hard-to-explain occurrences. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)

No Fear

All three staff say they have become used to the strange occurrences and have never felt fear. Wickman said she considers them similar to scientific “data points.”

During the weekend investigations, teams go out at staggered 20-minute intervals. One team will do the fort buildings while another does the grounds and a third goes through the cemetery.

All three museum staffers say the activity they see is not relegated to the night or day, it just happens when it happens.

Wickman was setting up an exhibit on a Monday a year or so ago when the museum was closed. She and Bahe heard footsteps coming down the hall of the museum.

“The doors are locked there is no one here, but Michelle and I, we are in the gallery, and it is those hobnailed boots, you could hear the nails clicking on the tile floor,” she said. “Someone is walking almost as if they had walked from the fort buildings and down the hallway. We go out and look and there is nobody there.”

They weren’t afraid.

“It’s very matter of fact, it’s like it’s one of the guys,” Wickman said.

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Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.

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DK

Dale Killingbeck

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Killingbeck is glad to be back in journalism after working for 18 years in corporate communications with a health system in northern Michigan. He spent the previous 16 years working for newspapers in western Michigan in various roles.