Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park has long insinuated itself among the ranks of haunted places of North Dakota, by always seeming to provide just enough atmosphere—a retreating footstep here, a fading whisper there—to make the ever-growing sub-culture of paranormal enthusiasts emphatically declare the place to be a haven to phantoms, ghouls, spirits, lingerers-on, or any other name by which a ghost may be called. Even the skeptics, when presented with stranger circumstances than may be easily dismissed by logic, are sometimes forced to use the I-don’t-know-how-to-explain-it shoulder shrug.
When the Custer House was reconstructed in 1989 it seems the men and women who long ago lived and died at Fort Lincoln were themselves resurrected. Interpreters and tourists both reported paranormal experiences from the beginning, and as more buildings were added, so too were hauntings to the chronicles of the strange and unexplained at Fort Lincoln. A woman wearing a black dress is seen looking out a second-floor window of the Custer House; footsteps are heard pacing the sergeant’s quarters in the Barracks; the voices of weeping women echo along the boardwalk; a shadowy figure stalks the Commissary at night; horses’ hooves stomp the dirt of their stalls in the Stables.
Paranormal activity has continued for years; occasionally a new phenomena is documented—floating orbs in photographs became quite popular in the early part of the 21st century.
