Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum bills itself as the place where the Old West comes alive. But that’s not all that comes to life in the museum.
Sometimes, late at night after the museum lights have been shut off and it’s time to go home, museum staff — even the skeptics — have reported things they can’t quite explain.
The sound of booted footsteps following them in the darkened museum’s carriage space, for example. And a trail of child-sized footsteps leading up to an old fire truck. Steps that no matter how often they’re cleaned away just keep reappearing.
And then there’s that old mannequin, wearing a dress whose origins have been lost to time, which simply refuses to leave the museum.
“Mike Kassel, he’s an absolute skeptic,” Marty Perez with Haunting Across America told a sold-out crowd of around 20 people who gathered on a recent Saturday in October to investigate the strange activity at the museum.
Kassel is the museum’s director.
“He personally took the doll out and threw it away,” Perez said. “But every time they threw this doll out, it would just end up right back in the museum.”
Was an employee bringing the doll back in?
That’s what Kassel told Cowboy State Daily he believes, but no one was ever caught doing so, and no one ever owned up to the prank if so.
Finally, a woman named Amanda Marshall decided to adopt the doll and took it back to her own office. The doll finally stayed put.
“But they do get some weird stuff in the back office, and they think it’s because of that doll,“ Perez said.
Broken Door, Flying Hats
Kassel has worked at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum since 2001 and became its curator in 2011. He is a skeptic, but even he has things he can’t explain that have happened at the museum.
One of them involves a malfunctioning fire door.
“This door hadn’t functioned for about a year and a half, and the (maintenance man) and I worked for hours one afternoon trying to get that silly door out from its track to get to the electric motor in the back,” Kassel said. “He had completely disconnected all power to it, to make sure it’d be safe to work on.”
The two were the last to leave the museum that night, and they were the first to arrive the next morning. Since it had been so difficult to move, they had left the unpowered door open that night, so they could get back in and continue their work the next day.
“But when we came back the next morning, that door was closed, and there is no way that should happen,” Kassel said. “The door had no power, and we were the last people there that night and the first people back there the next morning.”
And then there are the flying hats inside an enclosed glass display case.
“There were about five hats in there, men’s and women’s hats, sitting on like mannequin heads,” Kassel said. “And since they’re in a completely enclosed glass box, there’s no way to get to them, unless you have two or three people pick up the glass and then have someone else reach inside to start moving things.”
Kassel and the others were working on a different exhibit at the time, and they decided to bring out an old cigar store Indian that was part of a circus wagon that once belonged to Wild West showman C.B. Irwin and his family around 1912.
“It’s a really nice piece,” Kassel said. “It had been tucked into a corner since before I became the museum curator, and I had noticed it and thought it would be a good idea to bring it out.”
But, as they were maneuvering the cigar store mannequin, turning it around so that it’s gaze was looking right at the hats, suddenly one of the hats flew off its mannequin head form.
“This is a completely sealed glass box,” Kassel said. “And the hat was in a perfectly unprovoked environment. Nobody was standing there.”
None of the other hats felt off their stands. They were completely untouched, not even a vibration to mark what had just happened.
The other incident that Kassel still can’t quite explain happened a few years ago. A member of the museum staff was walking by a glass display case with Thunderbirds aircraft memorabilia.
Right as she passed by, the glass not only shattered, but blew out 5 feet away from the case, showering the person with pieces of broken tempered glass.
When Kassel and other museum employees went to see, there was an outline of the staff person who’d been hit by the glass.
“There wasn’t even one bit of glass inside the case, and nothing inside the case was disturbed,” Kassel said. “And this was an old glass box, probably about 10 years old at the time this happened, and the glass was tempered, so I’ve seen it happen before. If they’re not made just right, they can shatter.”
But, what’s not typical, Kassel said, is for them to travel any real distance.
“Tempered glass is interesting because you have two panes of glass with plastic,” he said. “And most of the time, when tempered glass shatters, the plastic is supposed to hold it together. I mean, that’s why it’s tempered right?”
From left, Crystal Knepper and Candice and Marty Perez with Haunting Across America. The Perez's became interested in ghost stories after living on the F.E. Warren Air Force Base. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Photographs of these old carriages taken at night at the CFD Old West Museum sometimes have a green mist in them after the photographs are later examined, according to Marty and Candice Perez. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A group of people listen as Marty Perez talks about the spirits beloved to haunt the Hole in the Wall playroom at the CFD Old West Museum. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The REM Pod is another paranormal investigations device triggered by fluctuations to EMF fields. The devices are often used as a way for ghosts to let people know they're there. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Marty Perez sets a REM pod up in an area where there is a milk jug at the CFD Old West Museum. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
This heavy sign was flung off the wall, according to Marty Perez. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Marty Perez talks about paranormal activity he has witnessed in this area of the CFD Old West Museum. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Some people report smelling popcorn at the CFD Old West Museum. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A pair of old World War 2 pants, as well as an empty box and a silver spur are among items that have caused spikes on K2 meters which measure EMF activity. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
An old dress that might be haunted at the CFD Old West Museum. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
This silver spur has a history, but no one knows what happened to the other silver spur. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The hats in this display case have been known to come flying off their pedestals for no reason that's discernible. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
More artifacts that have spiked K2 meters. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Ghost Hunt
Haunting Across America is a paranormal investigations team with three principals. They are Marty and Candice Perez and Crystal Knepper. They began their investigation of the CFD Old West Museum three years ago.
Marty Perez describes himself as something of a skeptic, but even he had difficulty explaining the things that happened on that very first investigation.
Knepper is a self-described “sensitive.” She was brought in blind.
“I had never been here before,” she said. “And they didn’t tell me anything. No stories from the staff or anything like that.”
She felt a pull to the lobby area and told Marty and Candice that she kept getting the letter, “L” in her mind.
“Finally, at the end of the night, Martin decided to test my abilities, I guess, and he brought me over here (to the lobby), and we actually got quite a bit of a reaction.”
They believe they connected with a ghost.
“It didn’t interact very well with males,” Marty Perez recalled. “It wasn’t a fan of males. And she was more of a trickster kind of girl.”
They soon noticed that every time they would turn away from the museum, there would be a sound from somewhere inside the museum.
“So we’d turn around, and as soon as we did that, this flashlight would go off,” he said, holding up a little flashlight that turns on and off by twisting its end.
There’s no button to push on the flashlight at all. It turns on and off only when the end piece on the face of the flashlight is turned.
Perez typically sets the flashlight off to one side, so that no one is touching the flashlight at all while he’s speaking. And he’ll invite any presence in the room to show itself by turning on the flashlight.
Before he does that, however, he passes the flashlight around so that everyone can examine it and test its operation for themselves.
That night at the museum, Candice Perez said she could see the end of the flashlight turning itself on.
But it wasn’t just the flashlight that started to creep them out. It was the way it kept happening, three or four times.
“Finally, I was like ‘Why are you trying to scare people?’” Marty Perez said.
Her Name Was Lucy
After that, they started asking questions, chief among them, “What is your name?”
They started to guess names, just tossing out ideas. Crystal went with “L” words.
When she hit on the word Lucy, that’s when everything, from K2 meters to a little Pikachu doll that could make sounds went wild.
K2 meters detect electromagnetic fields in the range of 1,000 to 20,000 Hz. It’s believed that paranormal entities can manipulate these EMF fields, causing K2 meters to spike and switching on electronic gadgets, like flashlights and electronic dolls, letting people know of their presence.
“We’re like, OK, so your name is Lucy,” Marty Perez said. “Everything we had went wild again. Pikachu, everything, it was nuts.”
Further questions suggested that Lucy was just 14 when she died, Knepper added.
“And even the staff who worked here, if they were male, they would get tripped, shoved, and stuff pulled from their pockets,” she said. “She would just kind of pick on people a lot, because as Marty said earlier, she was a trickster. She was one of the more interactive spirits that we usually had on tours.”
That first interaction is all captured in a video on the group’s YouTube page, where they have collected all their ghostly investigations in one place.
Lucy remained active in the area for three years, until the area was rebuilt.
“A large plate of glass was installed in the middle,” Marty Perez said, pointing in the general vicinity. “When the staff was putting that glass in, and you see how thick it is, the whole thing shattered as they were putting it together.”
A whole brand-new plate of glass had to be ordered.
“Since then, we haven’t seen Lucy anymore,” Marty Perez said. “And that’s the only thing we have in the museum that we don’t feel is here any longer. But we like to start here, because we like to honor Lucy.”
Other Ghosts
Lucy isn’t the only presence Haunting Across America has found at the museum.
In the Hole In The Wall playroom, there are two young boys who enjoy playing a few pranks of their own.
“You see that fire truck that was in the corner over here,” Marty Perez said. “And there was a little, tiny footprint that was walking toward the fire truck. The staff had tried to mop them off. They tried to clean them. And for weeks, they couldn’t get rid of these little footprints.”
Throughout this story, the REM pod, which has several lights activated by electromagnetic fields, that Marty Perez had placed at one side kept going off. When he would politely ask that the REM pod stop flashing and beeping, it would shut off.
But then the flashlight, which was sitting to the other side, would go off instead.
It, too, turned itself back off when asked politely by Candice Perez.
“We asked the boys if they were the ones putting out the footprint,” Perez said, continuing the story. “And this is all on the video at our YouTube site as well, but so they ratted out their friend, Lucy.”
Not much is known about the two young boy ghosts said to haunt the Hole in the Wall room, Marty Perez said. One of the boys may have been a drowning victim. The other remains a mystery.
Personal Connections
Some of the ghosts that the Perez’ interact with at the museum have a personal connection.
“Kyle’s family owned the largest dairy in Cheyenne,” Marty Perez said, standing in front of an old milk jug that’s at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum.
“Kyle absolutely loved the paranormal, absolutely loved it,” Marty Perez said. “And he’s the reason why we came in the first place because he begged the museum’s director to allow us to come into the building because he’d heard so many stories.”
Kyle was supposed to come with the Perez’s for their very first tour of the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum, but he passed away the summer before, and never got to do the tour.
That first year, Marty and Candice Perez were unaware that the milk jug had belonged to their friend Kyle, but their friend found a way to let them know he was there.
“Through the years, as we come to this area, and as you can see now — “ Perez said, pointing toward the flashlight that had suddenly flicked on by itself, “Kyle has always let us know that he’s here. Whether it’s through the flashlight or the K2.”
The area where Kyle’s milk jug resides is an active area, Marty Perez added. They’ve heard knocks on the wall, and people sometimes claim to smell popcorn in the area, even though there’s no popcorn anywhere in the building.
There’s also a heavy sign in the area that Marty Perez said had somehow lifted itself off the wall and was thrown across the floor, according to security tape footage that was later reviewed by museum staff.
Don’t Forget
The last stop on the tour is a collection of miscellaneous artifacts that have been known to light up K2 meters and that give Knepper that little tug that she sometimes feels when there’s something active in an area.
The items go back 50-some years, Marty Perez said, and each of them has a fun history, though some of them remain a bit of mystery, particularly the empty box.
It didn’t have a number on it, so there was no way to know what came in the empty box.
But the picture with a single spur has a fun story. It came from a man named Bob.
“No one knows where the other spur is,” Marty Perez said. “And one reason why “I’m not putting any of our equipment, we’re not turning it on here, is because it would not shut up. If I put it over there (by the spur) it would just keep going and going. We could not talk on our last tour because of that.”
Nonetheless, Bob is what Haunting Across America is all about, Perez said.
“His spirit has been sitting on that shelf for 30-some-odd years, undisturbed, and no one ever looked at it until three paranormal investigators came and brought Robert’s history back to life.’
And that, is the value of a ghost tour for Marty Perez. It’s all about remembering the past lives that have come before us, because no one wants to die and be forgotten. And it’s also about the lessons that can be learned from the history of those who came before, and how those lessons can still affect the lives of those who remain behind.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
