being there
by jeremy russell

Haunting Little Bighorn

THE LITTLE BIGHORN Battlefield National Monument seems like a placid enough piece of ground. Situated near the Little Bighorn River in southeastern Montana, about 15 miles from the city of Hardin, its 765 acres of parkland saw more than 330,000 visitors in 2001. And most of them no doubt came away with impressions of a place given over to peaceful, picturesque repose. But the soil here absorbed more than its fair share of blood 127 years ago.

On June 25, 1876, George Armstrong Custer (often called a general, he had actually been demoted to lieutenant colonel) led an attack on a group of Lakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians who had joined forces. The Native Americans outnumbered the U.S. military men by as much as nine to one, and while 40 of their number were killed, Custer's battalion was slain to a man. Two other U.S. battalions took heavy losses, and the total body count was just under 270 soldiers.

In 1881 a cavalry monument to "Custer's Last Stand" was erected where the bodies fell, and this April a tribute to the Native Americans was at long last added. But while Little Bighorn is a final resting place of sorts, the battleground seems to be one of the most haunted places in the United States.

At least 27 people claim to have had uncanny experiences at Little Bighorn, most of them since the 1950s. Historians, park volunteers and rangers, seasonal employees, tourists, and even one National Park Service law enforcement officer have described sudden, mysterious drops in temperature, the sensation of being grabbed by an invisible hand, inanimate objects moved by an invisible force (such as light switches being turned on), and apparitions or groups of apparitions. Strange sounds have been heard, including disembodied voices and footsteps, high-pitched whistling, and frightening screams. One man reported witnessing the battle itself.

Debra D. Munn, who discusses such incidents in her book Big Sky Ghosts: Eerie True Tales of Montana (1993), claims the people in the Little Bighorn chapter were among her most reliable witnesses. "I interviewed for that part of the book lots of reliable, no-nonsense types who had extraordinary experiences," she told me. "Also, many of the interviewees were history buffs or students interested in accuracy, so that gave their accounts more reliability, in my view."

Perhaps the most grisly ghost sighting was that of the spirit of Lt. Benjamin Hodgson. In 1983, Christine Hope, a student intern doing research on the site, awoke in the middle of the night to find a man sitting across from her in a chair with an expression of horror on his face. At first she thought he was an intruder, but noting his long, flowing mustache and strange clothes, she gradually realized he must be the revenant of a cavalry soldier. Then she blinked, and he was gone.

Later Hopes saw Hodgson's photograph in an out-of-print book and was surprised to recognize the man who had visited her that night. She learned she was not the first person to see his spirit.

Native American apparitions have been sighted as well, unidentified men on horseback who appeared on a hillside, then vanished. There have been vague reports that the shades of Native American women can be seen searching for dead loved ones on the grounds.

After reading all this and speaking with Munn, I was excited to do some ghost hunting of my own while I was there, but unfortunately Little Bighorn is a somewhat inappropriate and difficult site for such an undertaking. It may be haunted, but the park's gates close hours before dark, and the place is overrun with tourists during the day.

It wasn't until I was exiting the park that my faith in Bighorn's supernatural presences was renewed. At the Custer Battlefield Trading Post, a kitschy gift shop near the entrance, I found a postcard inscribed with the words "The spirit of General George A. Custer returns in a puff of smoke!"

Taken at what appears to be dawn, the picture on the card is of a plume of smoke that has a startling resemblance to Custer.

"Isn't that amazing?" the cashier said. "The woman who took that photograph took it from right over here. There was a grass fire in the battlefield back in 1996, and she thought she was just taking a picture of the smoke plume. When she showed the picture to a friend, he asked her, 'Where'd you get that picture of General Custer?' Then she started showing it to a lot of people, and this one guy bought it and made the postcard."

She paused to look at the picture a moment.

"It's kind of spooky."

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is off Interstate 90, Exit 510. For more information go to www.nps.gov/libi; write P.O. Box 39, Crow Agency, MT 59022-0039; or call (406) 638-3204.

Jeremy Russell is a freelance writer and novelist who lives in the Bay Area.