State file · ND
Haunted places in North Dakota
What are the most haunted places in North Dakota? The best-known are Custer House, Fort Abraham Lincoln and The Gray Lady of Sims.
North Dakota has few famous haunted houses, but its ghost lore runs deep in the history of the northern plains: Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara earth-lodge villages along the Missouri, the frontier forts of the Indian Wars, the railroad towns the Northern Pacific created and then abandoned, and the homesteaders who built churches on the open prairie. Many of its stories are told quietly, in small communities, rather than sold as attractions.
- 2 hauntings
- 9 recorded sightings
Haunted places in North Dakota
Custer House, Fort Abraham Lincoln
A rebuilt 1870s cavalry post where George and Libbie Custer lived before Little Bighorn. Guides tell of a woman at the window and unseen hands. Local legend
The Gray Lady of Sims
All that remains of the coal town of Sims is its 1884 Lutheran parsonage and church – and the story of a pastor’s wife who still plays the organ. Local legendThe ghost lore of North Dakota
The best-known sites are tied to that history. At Fort Abraham Lincoln, where George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry out to the Little Bighorn in 1876, guides tell of a woman at the window of the rebuilt Custer House. In the ghost town of Sims, the parsonage of a Scandinavian Lutheran congregation has its Gray Lady. Elsewhere, the Arikara tell of Bloody Knife’s horse, said to have carried the spirits of the Little Bighorn dead home to Like-A-Fishhook Village.
Visitors base themselves in Bismarck and Mandan, take the Old Red Old Ten byway west through old railroad towns, and head north to the remarkably complete Fort Totten State Historic Site. Indigenous sites and former boarding schools carry painful histories for living communities – visit them as places of history and remembrance.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Bismarck and Mandan
The capital and its neighbour across the Missouri hold the state’s oldest frontier history, from the Northern Pacific era to the forts on the bluffs.
- Fort Totten State Historic Site
One of the best-preserved frontier forts in the West, later an Indian boarding school, now a state historic site with an inn in the old officers’ quarters.
- Old Red Old Ten Scenic Byway
The old highway from Mandan to Dickinson passes the ghost town of Sims and a string of railroad towns.
- Medora
The Badlands cattle town of Theodore Roosevelt and the Marquis de Morès, whose chateau and frontier buildings anchor its Old West history.
Timeline
- November 19, 1872Fort Abraham Lincoln named Custer House, Fort Abraham Lincoln
The infantry post of Fort McKeen was renamed and soon expanded into a cavalry fort for the 7th Cavalry under Custer.
- May 1876The 7th Cavalry rides out Custer House, Fort Abraham Lincoln
Custer led his regiment from the fort on the campaign that ended at the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. Libbie Custer received the news at the fort.
- 1883Sims founded The Gray Lady of Sims
The Northern Pacific founded the coal-and-water stop and named it for executive George Sims.
- 1884The parsonage is built The Gray Lady of Sims
Scandinavian settlers built a parsonage whose upper floor served as their church until 1900.
- c. 1916–1918Death of the pastor’s wife The Gray Lady of Sims
According to local tradition, the wife of the pastor died during these years; she is remembered as the Gray Lady.
- 1947The railroad moves on The Gray Lady of Sims
A straightened Northern Pacific main line bypassed Sims, and the post office closed, leaving a ghost town.
- 1989The Custer House rebuilt Custer House, Fort Abraham Lincoln
North Dakota reconstructed the commanding officer’s house for its statehood centennial; guides’ ghost stories followed.
- October 2008Laura Bush visits The Gray Lady of Sims
The former First Lady, honorary chair of Save America’s Treasures, toured the restored church, reported to be the oldest Lutheran church in North Dakota west of the Missouri.
- October 2021Haunted Fort season Custer House, Fort Abraham Lincoln
The park’s annual Haunted Fort attraction ran through October in the reconstructed buildings, one of the state’s biggest Halloween events.
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