The Cowboy Bar in Meeteetse had a reputation for rowdy guests over the past century, but not all who roam the building are looking for a good time.
Polite feminine voices have been heard, gifts of flowers accepted and an unexplained chill his hit the air when the spirit was displeased with impropriety.
Bartender and cook Ella Randol is convinced a spirit haunting the bar is not a bartender or prostitute – but a woman of good standing who once operated a dry good store in Meeteetse and was one of the respected founders of the frontier town.
Randol said she has experienced a chill when the spirit was displeased with other ghosts or patrons at the bar.
Randol said she discovered a presence in the Cowboy Bar when she was exploring the attic with a bar patron. The two were in the newly discovered room when they realized someone had just been there.
“We walk over to a corner of the room with our flashlights, and it looks like somebody had been sitting in the insulation,” Randol said. “Mind you, you can see through the insulation. You would fall. If you even just put your toe, it would go through.”
The patron started to walk over to the corner to investigate and then froze.
'We Felt A Woman's Presence'
“We felt a woman's presence,” Randol said. “I told him not to go over there, that she was not wanting him over there. We both got that feeling.”
The two backed away and left the room. Another employee, Aspen, had remained on the ladder but snapped pictures.
They revealed that the corner of the room where the woman could be felt was light while another corner of the room was dark.
“You can see two figures, one dark and one light, and we were like, ‘That is insane,'” Randol said.
“Her camera would not focus on that dark corner, but it would on the woman’s corner.”
They closed the attic door firmly behind them, but the next day they discovered it had been opened and has remained that way ever since.
As time went by, Randol and the owner of the Cowboy Bar, Tess Tom, would have conversations with a lady spirit Randol thought at first was named Anne Marie.
On Mother’s Day, Randol brought flowers to the attic as a gift. She later discovered that the flowers had been moved.
When they asked “Anne Marie” if she liked the flowers, they recorded a woman’s voice saying, Thank you."
Since discovering the attic, Randol said the spirit would occasionally come down and visit the Cowboy Bar and Café.
“When Tess and I are both down here, she'll come down and you'll literally feel a woman's touch,” Randol said. “That’s when we know she's here.”
Researching the Ghost
Curious about the identity of the spirit calmly haunting the bar, Randol went to the Meeteetse Museums' website and made a surprising discovery. A woman named Anne Marie had really existed.
“The story that I was getting was that this woman had lived on the Antlers Ranch and that she got divorced,” Randol said. “I think she hated men.”
Randol’s research showed she had gotten some facts right and others wrong. A postcard at the museum revealed Anne Marie had lived and died in Denver, so she could not be the ghost.
However, her daughter-in-law Sylvia fit the details that Randol said she had picked up on.
“I had gotten this picture in my head eventually, and I was like, I think I can see her,” Randol said. “She has brown curly hair that she wears up. She's got a white hat with a red stripe, and she wears either a white dress or a bluish dress, but they're both prairie looking dresses.”
At the Meeteetse Museums, Randol found photos that matched the image she had been describing. The woman was Sylvia Mikkelson and she owned a business on the same block that the Cowboy Bar and Café are now located on.
“I went back and apologized to her,” Randol said. “She must have thought we were so stupid but now we call her Anne Marie Sylvia as a joke which she seems to get a kick out of.”
Respected Businesswoman
According to the Meeteetse Museums, Sylvia Mikkelson was born Sylvia Cheney in Pennsylvania in 1868. When she was 18, her family moved to Lander and in 1889, at age 21, she married Nels (Niels) Mikkelson. They had met on the Owl Creeks and lived on a claim at the base of the Owl Creek Mountains on Cottonwood Creek before moving to Sunshine, near Meeteetse, by 1898.
Nels ran the stage line and did some freighting while Sylvia ran a dry-goods store. It was next to the Meeteetse Hotel, run by Mary Corbett. She was a devout Baptist and beloved by the people of Meeteetse.
By 1910, Nels and Sylvia were divorced, a fact Randol claimed she picked up on previously about the spirit haunting the Cowboy Bar and Café.
On March 7, 1912, Sylvia was issued the patent on her own homestead.
The Big Horn County News on Jan. 10, 1906, showed that Sylvia was living and making improvements on the land. The following year advertisements for her dry goods store ceased, and by 1910 Sylvia was living on her land with three boarders: Alva Alexander, Alva Alexander Jr., and Etta Alexander.
Sylvia sold her ranch to the Antlers Ranch in 1915 and returned to Lander for the winter. Randol said she had picked up that the spirit haunting them was tied to the Antler Ranch and said this was just more verification the spirit haunting the Cowboy Bar was Sylvia.
In March 1916, Sylvia returned to Meeteetse to live. In September 1918, tragedy struck. Sylvia went in for a routine operation to remove gallstones and died “from the effects.”
The Meeteetse News on Sept. 20, 1918, announced, “The community was shocked as we go to press this (Saturday) morning to learn of the sudden death of Mrs. Sylvia Mikkelson, who has been a resident of this part of Wyoming for the past thirty-three years.”
The entire community grieved the death of Sylvia and her ex-husband accompanied her body to Lander for the burial.
Doesn’t Like Frank
Randol said she believes Sylvia was not ready to leave Meeteetse and has remained on the block where she once operated her dry-goods story. According to Randol, Sylvia does not approve of some of the other spirits who are around, especially Frank, a ghost who hangs out behind the bar.
“She doesn't like Frank, our ghost who feels like he's a macho man,” Randol said. “He likes to stay behind the bar but we told him to stay over by the gambling machines instead.”
Randol said they have a noose that hangs in the bar and she personally feels Frank is attached to it. She said she is not sure why and theorized it was either because he himself was hanged, that he did the hanging, or he had to experience somebody that he loved being hanged.
“He will touch you,” Randol said. “He'll grab your hips and he'll push you to the side. If you're in his way, he will move you.”
Randol said Sylvia does not like Frank because of the way he keeps touching all these girls, to get them out of his way.
There is a third spirit Randol calls Willis. She said he is a friendly ghost who likes to hang out in dry storage.
“Sylvia likes him, because he's nice,” Randol said. “He's respectful and just does his own thing.”
Randol said she believes Sylvia is still hanging around because the Cowboy Bar & Café was her business and she took care of it in life.
“She was here all the time and these were her people,” Randol said. “Everybody loved her.”
Randol said she has tried to help Sylvia move on but got the feeling Sylvia wanted to remain.
Especially now that another woman owns the business on the same block she once ran her store.
“We make it a hospitable place,” Randol said. “For both our living customers and Sylvia.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
