State file · WY
Haunted places in Wyoming
What are the most haunted places in Wyoming? The best-known are Wyoming Frontier Prison (the Old Pen) and Wyoming Territorial Prison.
Wyoming’s ghost lore is the lore of the frontier. The state is the homeland of the Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne and other nations, and it was crossed by the Oregon, Mormon and California trails before the Union Pacific railroad drove through in the late 1860s, raising towns like Cheyenne, Laramie and Rawlins almost overnight. Outlaws, lawmen, cattle wars and mining booms followed, and many of the state’s ghost stories cling to the buildings built to hold the outlaws.
- 2 hauntings
- 9 recorded sightings
Haunted places in Wyoming
Wyoming Frontier Prison (the Old Pen)
Wyoming’s state prison from 1901 to 1981 held some 13,500 inmates and saw 14 executions. Staff and ghost hunters say the cellblocks are still busy. Regional legend
Wyoming Territorial Prison
The 1872 Laramie prison that held Butch Cassidy is now a state historic site, where visitors say a convict cigar maker still makes his presence known. Local legendThe ghost lore of Wyoming
Its two best-known haunted places are prisons. The Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie, opened in 1872, held Butch Cassidy and is now a state historic site with a convict ghost who announces himself with cigar smoke. The Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins, the state penitentiary from 1901 to 1981, saw executions by hanging and gas and some 200 deaths within its walls; its director cheerfully calls it “officially haunted,” and the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures has investigated it.
Beyond the prisons, old cattle-baron hotels in Buffalo and Sheridan, frontier forts such as Fort Laramie, and lonely trail landmarks across the high plains carry their own stories, told to visitors in a state with more open space than almost anywhere in America.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Rawlins
The railroad town of the Old Pen, with its Death House, prison cemetery and Halloween night tours.
- Laramie
The Territorial Prison and the university town’s historic downtown host the state’s best-known ghost stories of the outlaw era.
- Buffalo and Sheridan
Historic cattle-country hotels and inns from the 1880s and 1890s trade on ghosts of cowboys, ranchers and showmen.
- Fort Laramie
The 19th-century trading post and army fort on the Oregon Trail, now a national historic site, has long-told garrison legends.
Timeline
- 1873The first prisoners arrive Wyoming Territorial Prison
The new territorial penitentiary opens; a fire the same year and frequent escapes mark its first years.
- 1894–1896Butch Cassidy’s sentence Wyoming Territorial Prison
Robert LeRoy Parker serves 18 months for horse theft, his only prison term, before being pardoned.
- July 7, 1899America’s first female prison chaplain Wyoming Territorial Prison
Dr. May Preston Slosson is appointed chaplain, ministering to inmates in a prison of enforced silence.
- 1901The penitentiary opens Wyoming Frontier Prison (the Old Pen)
The first prisoners move into the new stone prison, which has 104 cells and neither running water nor electricity.
- 1901Death of Julius Greenwelch Wyoming Territorial Prison
The life-sentenced inmate who ran a cigar business inside the prison dies; he is now its best-known ghost.
- 1912A lynching inside the walls Wyoming Frontier Prison (the Old Pen)
An inmate is lynched in A Block, an event that still shapes the cellblock’s grim reputation.
- 1936The gas chamber is installed Wyoming Frontier Prison (the Old Pen)
The Death House adds a gas chamber; five men will die in it, after nine earlier hangings.
- 1981The prison closes Wyoming Frontier Prison (the Old Pen)
Inmates are transferred to a new state penitentiary, and the Old Pen begins its second life as a museum.
- 2004A state historic site Wyoming Territorial Prison
After restoration by local volunteers, the prison becomes the Wyoming Territorial Prison State Historic Site.
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