Walking with the ghosts of Virginia City

The Bale of Hay was quiet. The last of the wedding party had stumbled out to their horses about 20 minutes before. He loved the fact that in 2025 he was serving customers at Montana’s oldest saloon who rode away on horseback. The history of this place seemed to weave perfectly with the present. 

The bar was mopped and the cash counted. A quick trip around the premises brought the bartender head first into the smell of… mothballs. Right in the middle of the room not far from the pool table. 

Hesitant, he explored the closet. No smell. No mothballs there. He walked the rest of the restaurant with his hair on end. The smell stayed in that one place. Waiting every time that he returned. No matter, he convinced himself. Just an old building with an old smell. 

The next week, after a much slower shift the last of the locals left and he worked his way around the room clearing stray glasses. Mothballs again. He’d paid attention this time. The smell was not there earlier in the night. It was closer to the bar this time. Next to him as he cleaned up. The hair on the back of his neck raised once more. 

His inner voice talked his nerves down just like last week. It was his imagination. Even if it was not, it was harmless. A Dwight Yoakam song suddenly shattered the silence out of nowhere as the jukebox came to life in the empty bar, and then went silent. 

It came as no surprise to Lois Stephens that there was something going on at the Bale of Hay those nights. She’s been leading ghost walks in Virginia City for about eight years and has written a book about paranormal experiences old and new in the busted gold rush town. 

“I was also told they used to have a player piano in there, and that thing would start playing on its own,” she said after hearing about the juke box. “It drove everybody crazy. They finally unplugged it and got it out of there.”

She continues on with another story about the unexplained at the Bale of Hay. 

“One of the bartenders would see, she called them cowboys. Three cowboys looking in the window. But considering the times, I would probably figure they were civil war vets, because they do dress similarly, you know, and just because it was the Civil War era, that whole thing, I think what she probably saw was civil war vets and not cowboys,” she said of the encounters. 

Stephens is well versed in the history of Virginia City and much of that is featured in her book, Ghosts Walk in Virginia City, that is available at Rank’s Mercantile in Virginia City.  It’s the modern tales of the unexplained that really get Stephens excited. 

“I don't want to tell you things that happened in the 1800s or 1980, who cares? I want to tell you things that have happened in 2023 and 2024,” she exclaims before launching into a tale from the most recent tourist season at the Well’s Fargo Steakhouse. 

“There were some new people that were working at the Fargo this year, they're not from around here, so, you know, they didn’t grow up with the stories. Both of them saw the lady in blue in the Fargo their very first week of working there,” she goes on to draw on more of the recent sightings at the steakhouse. 

“Amy Kelley, who owns the Gravel Bar in Ennis, she used to run the Fargo. When she first started running the Fargo, she did not believe in ghosts. Her staff would tell her things that they were seeing and feeling, hearing, and she basically make fun of them, until she saw the lady in blue herself, and she said, yes, indeed, she now believes in ghosts.”

“Yes, indeed, there's something that goes on in that building,” she continued cautiously. “They would hear singing every so often. If Amy was in the kitchen, she'd hear singing coming from the dining room. So she'd go into the dining room and there was nobody there.”

“Kasey Smart used to work there, and she saw an awful lot of weird things that happened in there, and I don't remember how much is in my book, because this isn't a story I tell on my walk,” her tone continues to be cautious as though she may be overhead telling the tale. 

“She was in there helping Amy do something, and they were waiting for a salesman. Kasey saw a gentleman walk through the room and go into another part of the building. So she thought it was the salesman, and she thought, well, I want a cigarette. I don't have any. I'll go see if I can bum one from him. Well, there was nobody in that building.”

Stephens has no shortage of tales to tell, both old and new. While that is what the guests are paying for, what they are providing is new material. 

“Maybe once or twice a year, I get a really odd picture from somebody on my walk. I have, I don't know, 10 or 12 pictures that I usually show at the end of the walk. They're things that, to me, are really odd and I can't explain,” she said.

“I'm a skeptic, you know, like people will give me, oh, look at this. You can see a face in the window. Well, no, you can't most of the time, but if I can see something, it's there and I can't explain it.”

“What does interest me greatly is different people, different years, different walks, that don't know one another will come up with the same thing at certain spots,” she says. “You know, like ‘something really bad happened here,’ or ‘there was a child raped and murdered down in there.’ You know, things like this that I don't talk about on the walk. But when you hear the same thing from different people in different years. It does make you wonder.”

If you would like to be part of the paranormal experience in Virginia City, you can find Stephens contact information at www.virginiacitymt.com/Experience-The-Old-West/Ghost-Walk. Ghost tours for large groups are available year round by arrangement. Regular ghost walks take place nightly between roughly May 20 and Sept. 7.