Fortean Montana

Montana is the fourth largest state in the United States, and remains close to its frontier roots. However, its mysteries are little known beyond its borders. Several groups continue to investigate the mysteries of Montana, some pointing fingers at satanic cults, hauntings and spiritual sites, space aliens, and government or military conspiracies.

There are dozens of sites and towns across the state that have reputations as haunted locations. Virginia Ciity and Bannack were established as gold mining camps that developed into towns, and are now preserved as heritage sites full of the specters of miners and others who met tragic fates. There are over a dozen reportedly haunted sites in the capital city Helena and the mining city Butte, from former hospitals and brothels to theaters and residences of millionaires who made fortunes from gold. Helena is the site of a regular ghost walk where many of the tales are told, and several other places have ghost tours during the Halloween season. The Little Bighorn was the site of General Custer's defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne, and it is one of the most haunted sites in Montana, with many sites of full-bodied apparitions of Indians and white men who fell in the battle. Another famous haunted site is the old Montana Territorial Prison in Deerlodge.

Montana has seven reservations and ten different Native American tribes, from Blackfeet and Crow, to Sioux and Cheyenne. These tribes have many traditions of haunted and sacred places, Bigfoot, ghosts, nature spirits, and the Little People. For example in the Pryor Mountains, there is a cliff where votive offerings are made by the Crow tribe to the Little People who live in the canyons and mountains. There are hundreds of archaeological sites, including stone "tipi rings," stone effigies, cairns, and rock art sites.

UFOs have been sighted many times in Montana as well, beginning with a miner's report of a crash of an aerial object near Cadotte Pass in 1865; the miner visited the site and found an immense stone divided into compartments and marked with "hieroglyphics." One of the most significant UFO films of all time is the "Montana Movie" taken near Great Falls in 1950. UFOs and cattle mutilations were associated with Bigfoot sightings in the 1970s in the book "Mystery Stalks the Prairie." Crop circles appear too, such as one near Kalispell in 2001, and citizens continue to have concerns about chemtrails and weather control.

Cryptozoology also has a presence in Montana. Bigfoot sightings have been noted all over the state, from remote forested mountains and the windswept high plains, to rural communities, reservations, and outskirts of cities like Missoula. Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, is reported to be the home of a water monster sighted about one hundred times since 1889. A wolf-like animal with faint stripes called a shunka warak'in was shot in the 1880s by a rancher; it was stuffed by a taxidermist and the mount recently surfaced in a small museum in Ennis.

Montana's folklore of the Fortean continues to this day.

Lance Foster is an anthropologist and creator of Paranormal Montana (http://paranormalmontana.blogspot.com)