Ghosts: True Hauntings In Montana

By David Francis Curran

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Brautigan, Richard, A Pilgrimage, August 1982

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Monte Turner was a Missoula D.J. with station KLCY. Some years ago he was living in the basement of a house up the in Rattlesnake area of Missoula. That is, until some strange occurrences drove him out.

It was a fairly young house as houses go, being about 30 years old with a large yard. Stairs descended from the garage into the basement apartment which was furnished. Light filtered in through small windows high up on the basement walls giving it a dungeon-like atmosphere.

Monte slept on a hide-a-bed in what had been the family room. A man lived in the upstairs portion of the house.

Monte was working part-time at the radio station. One night Monte woke up and went to the bathroom. When he walked in he noticed that all four of the towels on his towel rack had been taken off, folded neatly and then lain carefully on the shower floor.

He talked to the man who lived upstairs. The man knew nothing about it.

About a week later Monte was again sleeping. Around the corner from where Monte slept, there was a light by the stairway that was always on. So Monte's bedroom was dimly illuminated. Monte awoke on his side and heard footsteps walking up to his bed on the other side. He turned to see who it was. But there was no one there. He sat up in bed and the footsteps continued. The footsteps seemed to walk around the foot of the bed, then, finally, they stopped.

When Monte told the man upstairs about it the man just laughed.

About two weeks later Monte again awoke in the middle of the night. He awoke facing a corner of the room in which there was a fireplace and chest of drawers. Monte had closed the only open drawer after getting ready for bed. Now, as he looked at that drawer, there was another light in addition to the one coming from the stairway. The light came from the fully open second drawer in Monte's chest of drawers--his junk drawer. He jumped out of bed and turned on the overhead light.

He walked over to the chest and looked into the drawer. Inside, the light was coming from an old flashlight he had had in the Air Force. The flashlight had not worked in three years--nor had the batteries been changed. The last time Monte had looked the batteries were corroded. It seemed to be glowing two or three times as bright as an ordinary flashlight could possibly glow. He hit the flashlight with his hand. He thought it might be hot, but it was not. He picked it up and turned it off. It would not go on again. He opened it and checked the batteries. They were the same corroded batteries.

Monte told the man upstairs about the event. The man told Monte that he thought it might be the ghost of a female relative who died of cancer and spent her last few years in that house. Monte also said he thought it was a sign he should leave. The man said that he shouldn't leave on that account. But the man left for a winter vacation two days later, leaving Monte alone in the house.

Monte talked to another D.J., "Murphy in the Morning", and the two of them decided to put the story on the air. They did it on Murphy's show. The interview ended around 7 a.m.and Monte went home. The house was completely locked up as Monte had left it, and he used his keys to get in. He went down the stairs and around the corner into the room where he slept.

On the far wall Monte had a big six-point bull elk rack. The heavy rack was hung on a nail. It was hung in such a way that it had to be lifted and slid on and off. The elk rack was sitting in the center of Monte's bed.

A number of other people have lived there since. But no one else has ever had any problems with the apartment.

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