Ghosts: True Hauntings In Montana

By David Francis Curran

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Brautigan, Richard, A Pilgrimage, August 1982

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Philipsburg

Judith Petersen* and her family were looking for a place to use on weekends. In their search, they came upon a large old house in Philipsburg.

The house had lain empty for a long time, the owners having moved out-of-state. Upon inquiry Judith discovered they could buy the house for a mere $5,000. It seemed a steal. So a contract was drawn up and the Petersen family took possession.

It was well insulated, had a brand new gas furnace and was in very good shape. Judith couldn't believe her luck.

Though in good condition, they needed to make a lot of changes to get the house the way they wanted it. For this reason they waited until some work had been done before their first visit to the place.

Finally, one Saturday--James, Frances, and Paul--Judith's children accompanied her to the house. James had to leave before nightfall. It was after he left that Frances, Paul and Judith all began to have the same dread about sleeping upstairs in the house.

As night came, there was a constant parade of cars passing the house, as if the neighbors wanted to see how the new tenants were making out.

Judith began to feel self-conscious in the uncurtained living room with all the cars going by, but she still did not wish to go to bed upstairs.

Feeling stuffy, Judith tried to open a window on the stairwell. But found it was stuck fast.

Paul, meanwhile, was exploring the attic of the house. When he came down he said that, as he wandered around, he felt a cold spot in one part of the attic. There he found a piece of paper.

Together the family looked at it. It was bill from a funeral parlor dated in the late 1800's.

There were far too many neighbors driving by downstairs. So, eventually, though reluctantly, the family did go upstairs to bed down for the night. However, they decided to sleep on the floor.

That night Judith had a dream. In that dream she said to someone, "How did you get that window open?" She was dreaming she was in the living room when a breeze through that same window couldn't open blew a piece of paper into her hands. And then she dreamt that her children had gone out of the house on green wooden stairs.

Later, Frances and Judith were awakened during the night when Paul yelled out, "Who are you?"

"What's the matter?" Judith asked.

Paul said, "It must have been a nightmare."

Paul went up to the attic again the next day and this time came down with a letter.

The letter, now lost, was about the estate of a woman musician who had been taken in by the owner of the house. He had met her at fair in Chicago. The letter spoke about her recent death from a fall down the kitchen stairs, and went on to say that the writer understood the owner had found the woman kindly when he met her, but advised that people do get difficult as they age. The letter writer, perhaps executor of the woman's estate, said that anything she owned the owner could consider his for taking care of her funeral arrangements.

The Petersens decided to leave before nightfall.

They were talking on the drive home about sending the story off to some magazine, when Frances saw a face on the front windshield. Afraid, Judith threw the letter and the receipt out the car window. That night they heard faint music in their own house.

From then on they only went back to the house in daylight. They had decided to rent it out and so had to get it ready. While they were getting it ready, they began to hear rumors about the house. One man who had lived in it told them, "I never had such a string of bad luck in my life as when I lived in that house." They noticed that some repairmen, the ones familiar with the house, always came in twos, never entering the house alone.

Upstairs, the back room, had stairs that at one time went down into the kitchen. The opening to the stairs had been blocked off and a closet put over it.

The back room was the only room in the house that did not have modern wiring. It had old, two-stranded wiring. This room always seemed dark. It did have a big window that faced the back of the house. Even when the family painted it white the room still retained its dreary atmosphere. It was impossible, Judith says, to make it light-hearted.

While they were working in the back room one time, the old owner happened by for a visit. She talked to Judith in the kitchen after coming in the back door. The entire time she was there, she failed to look at Judith. She kept her eyes rigidly on the doorway to the old staircase. When Judith said, "Isn't it nice to get back to see old friends?"

The woman replied, "I didn't leave anything here." As if afraid.

One day, James brought two friends by to help with fixing the house. One friend swore he heard faint music while he was working upstairs.

One renter was a divorcee with two children. One of her little girls was scared to death of the back room.

Judith went to the house alone once after a tenant had moved out. Some kids had gotten into the place and made a mess. They hadn't destroyed anything--Judith assumed that they were just trying to scare themselves. She had gone upstairs to clean and was coming down the stairs when she stopped. Below her foot was a marble, a child's marble. If she had stepped on it, she would have surely fallen down the stairs. She had swept the stairs beforehand and not seen it. When she looked at it closely, it turned out to be very old.

One day on the same staircase Frances was coming down when she suddenly stopped and stared at Judith.

"What's wrong?" Judith asked.

Frances couldn't speak for awhile. And then, finally she said, "You looked like an old woman. You had a different face."

Judith, after finally selling the house, discovered an historical photograph of it. In the photo, the back porch stairs of her dream were clearly visible.

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