It was fall 1982, and the summer season was nearing an end. Two employees were closing the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park for the season and were alone in the old lodge.
In the lobby, the large clock’s steady rhythmic tick marked the passing of time.
Bellman George Bornemann heard a strange noise. Knowing that people were supposed to be gone, he went to investigate, walking through the dark building to a balcony that overlooked the lobby.
He saw nothing.
Bornemann returned to his room, but then heard the noise again. And again, he checked and found nothing. The third time, he ran toward the sound.
That’s when he saw her.
The transparent figure gracefully ascended the wooden steps from the crow’s nest. She was dressed in a white flowing gown and appeared to be no more than a child.
Tucked under her arm, she cradled her head.
The bellman fled, then he and the other employee left the inn immediately.
The Crow’s Nest
At Old Faithful Inn, towering above the lobby is the crow’s nest from where this bride descended. This dream of architect Robert Reamer rises 76.5 feet to the ceiling of the Old Faithful Inn.
During the early years of the Inn, an orchestra would play in the room at the top and spectators would watch from the various landings as guests danced on the lobby floor below.
On Aug. 17, 1959, an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale rocked Yellowstone Park. The quake twisted some of the support timbers for the crow’s nest, making it unsafe for the number of guests visiting the Inn.
Although closed to most guests, one remains up there.
Over the years, there have been other sightings of this headless apparition with her head cradled in her arms.
The crow’s nest towers overhead where the orchestra used to play to the crowds beneath at Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
The bride had been found decapitated in the bathroom of Room 127. The bathroom’s retain much of their charm that they still had in 1914 when she was reported to have been murdered. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Old Faithful clock keeps time although the ghosts ignore the passage of years. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
The hallway leading to Room 127 at Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. After he murdered his wife, an angry new groom stomped down this hallway and disappeared from history. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Room 127 where the bride was reported to have been murdered in 1914 by her enraged husband at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
A ghostly light fixture that helps to set the ambience for the historical section of Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
The crow’s nest is closed to the public, but this does not deter the ghost who continues to haunt the structure. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
This room in the historic section of Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park, would have been much like the one the bride and her groom had as their honeymoon suite, Room 127. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily) 
Views of and from the Old Faithful Inn crow's nest. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily)
The Bride And Groom
During that winter of 1982, while doing research in the library at Missoula, Montana, Bornemann discovered that there had been a murder at the inn in summer 1914. It had happened in Room 127 and was close to the crow’s nest.
The tale Bornemann shared with guests thereafter, and with author Shellie Larios, began in 1914 New York.
The wealthy owner of a shipping company had a teenage daughter who wanted to marry an older man who worked in their house as a servant. Despite her father’s misgivings and the threat of being disinherited if she went through with the marriage, the young woman and the servant were wed in a quiet ceremony.
The father gave the couple a substantial dowry in the hopes that this at least would get them started in their new life. His final gift was to send them west on a honeymoon, where the family shame would be far away.
They were to stay in the Old Faithful Inn’s room 127. It was the place to take a fashionable vacation having been built only 13 years before.
On the way to Yellowstone, the new husband had managed to gamble away all their money. There wasn’t even enough left to pay their hotel bill. Staff at the Old Faithful Inn witnessed nightly arguments loud enough to be heard outside of their private room.
The bride sent a telegram to her father asking for more money. The answer was no and that he would instead send her a train ticket home.
Her new husband was livid.
That night the argument was louder and more violent than usual, then the husband stormed out of the hotel room, slamming the door.
This was the last anyone would see of him.
A hotel maid finally ventured into the hotel room and headed to the bathroom. Her screams brought many of the staff and guests rushing in to find the young bride in the bathtub, bloody and missing her head.
A few more days passed, and the summer heat brought with it a foul smell. Up in the crow’s nest, where the band played happy tunes, the staff found the missing head.
Over the years, sightings have been reported of the headless apparition.
Guests claimed to have seen a woman wearing a flowing white dress, walking down the stairs from the crow’s nest with her head under her arm.
Murder Or Mayhem?
In 2006, now the manager of the Old Faithful Inn, Bornemann was interviewed by Larios, author of “Yellowstone Ghost Stories.”
Bornemann told Larios that the headless bride appeared at the insistence of visitors who for years pressed him for a ghost story. The part about hearing running in the hall inside the deserted hotel was true and it’s what gave him the idea for the story.
Not all visitors believe Bornemann that the headless bride is a myth. They still claim that they, too, have seen the transparent bride carrying her own head.
Whatever the truth, the headless bride of the Old Faithful Inn will continue to haunt our imagination.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
