When things go bump in the night, beware!

Halloween is a night of scary monsters, skeletons, witches and tall tales about demons and ghosts. It’s the time of year that we allow ourselves to be frightened of things that go “bump” in the night and let our imagination run wild about unexplained phenomenon. Here are a couple of stories submitted by Mineral Independent readers who dare you to read their tales from the beyond.

The Ghost in the Basement Apartment

Monte Turner lives and works in Superior and remembered a haunting tale from his early days while living in Missoula. He worked part-time at a local radio station and was renting the basement of a house up in the Rattlesnake area.

At the time the home was only about 30 years old with a large yard. The stairs to the basement apartment descended from the garage into a small furnished room complete with a bathroom, fireplace, a hide-a-bed and a dresser with four drawers. It was an old family room and the home belonged to a man who lived upstairs on the main floor. Monte decided to hang a heavy prized six-point bull elk rack on one of the walls in the dimly lit room.

The only light came from a small bulb around the corner from his bed where stairs led to the main level. There were also small windows high on the basement walls and light would filter through them, giving the small apartment a dungeon-like atmosphere.

One night, he had woken up and gone into the bathroom where he noticed all four of his bath towels had been taken off the towel rack and were now neatly folded and sitting on the floor of the shower. The next day he asked his landlord if he knew anything about the towels. But his landlord replied that he knew nothing about it.

About a week later, Monte woke up to the sound of footsteps walking toward his bed from the stairs. He looked to see who was in the room but no one was there. He sat up and the footsteps continued to walk from one side of his bed to the other, then they stopped. The next morning Monte told his story to the landlord who just laughed.

About two weeks later, Monte was again woken up and noticed a light coming from one of the drawers in his dresser. He got up to investigate and found the drawer fully open and the light was coming from an old flashlight he had while in the Air Force.

The flashlight had not worked in three years and the last time he had looked at the batteries they had become corroded with acid. The flashlight illuminated three times the brightness that it had ever shone before. It was so bright he quickly touched the surface, fearing it was hot. But it was cool to the touch and he picked it up and turned it off. He tried to turn it back on but the flashlight would not work. When he opened it up to check the batteries, only dust poured out.

Once again Monte told his landlord about what had happened and this time he told his tenant about a female relative who had died of cancer and had spent her last few years in that house, “perhaps it’s her ghost”, he said.

Monte decided it was time to move out. While packing up, his landlord had gone on vacation for a few days, leaving Monte alone in the house. During one of his final days living there, he and a fellow DJ at the station decided to talk about his encounters on the “Murphy in the Morning” show. The taping wrapped up around 7 p.m. and Monte went home.

The house had been completely locked up and after he unlocked the doors, Monte descended the stairs to his small basement apartment. He found that his six-point elk rack was missing from the wall. Everything else in the tiny room seemed to be in order, except there was a large lump in middle of his bed. A sheet covered the lump with the ends tightly tucked into the corners of the bed.

The movie, “The Godfather” was still in theaters and a vision of the scene where the movie producer, Jack Woltz, wakes up to find the severed head of his prize thoroughbred horse in his bed, ran through Monte’s mind.

He was freaking out when he finally pulled the covers back to reveal the heavy bull elk antler rack in the center of the bed. With no conceivable explanation, he quickly packed the rest of his belongings and found a new place to live.

After moving out, Monte talked to a man who had rented the same apartment about a year later. He asked the man if he had anything strange happened to him while living there.

“His eyes widened and he almost blurted out that he had told no one because they wouldn’t believe him. But he had seen the ghost once sitting in a chair as he walked by a room. It was an elderly woman in a flowered print dress with lots of pink and yellow. He saw her for a split second and then she was gone,” the man said.

He also told Monte that the spirit was always moving things around on him. For example he would find his toothbrush in the laundry room or his shoes in the closet of a room he never used.

One time he couldn’t find his keys and screamed, “Enough of this! I’m late and I need my keys, NOW!” and he heard a jangling from the bathroom. There were his keys in the sink. Needless to say, the man moved out of the haunted apartment less than a year after moving in.

The Devil in the Graveyard

Sabine Dargel who lives in Remscheid, Germany has been visiting Plains, Montana since 2009. She fell in love with the tiny town and visited many times from her home located near Cologne. Her grandmother, Margarethe Morteln used to tell a ghost story to her grandkids about a young man who was in her class. Margarethe went to school in Remscheid and attended Ehringhausen Ground School in the early 1920’s.

She was about 13 years old and this young boy who she described only as “Big Mouth” was always up to something. Around Halloween their teacher always told ghost stories and this boy, “Big Mouth” would laugh and make jokes about all the other children who were scared.

This particular year, the teacher told the story of an old graveyard in town and the strange things that were going on around it. Old folks in town said the devil would come out from time to time to catch some new souls. This happened directly after a full moon and dead people were found on the old graves. Nobody in town could tell why the others had died.

“Big Mouth” laughed and laughed about this story and said he didn’t believe any of it. He said he would prove all these stories were only for scaring babies and that after the next full moon he would go with some buddies to the old graveyard. They would show everybody there was nothing to be scared of.

It was a dark November night when the group made their way across town. Clouds hung in the night sky and no one could see each other as the wind blew hard and made strange noises among the headstones. The young boys were very quiet and clung close together, looking to their left and right.

In the middle of the graveyard a new hole had been dug for a funeral to be held the next day. The boys didn’t see it until it was too late. “Big Mouth” was in the lead and when he stopped the others pushed into him and he tumbled into the hole, letting out a loud scream.

The others were scared and ran away in different directions, straight to their homes. Up they went into their beds, grabbing their blankets to pull it over their heads. No one slept well that night.

The next day at school, the sun shone bright and the boys laughed about their adventure from the night before. But when they looked around they noticed that “Big Mouth” was missing.

They thought maybe he were still at home, ashamed about his cowardice loud yell at the grave site.

In class they waited for lessons to begin but a few minutes later the teacher came in with a very serious face. He sat down and said that he had to tell them all something very sad.

That morning when the gardener of the graveyard went to look at the new site before the funeral, he had found “Big Mouth” lying dead in the fresh grave.

Later the students were told that the look on his face was that of total fear. His mouth was opened wide and a pitchfork had gone through his jacket and fixed him to the ground. Everybody was sure that “Big Mouth” had died thinking that the devil had grabbed him to catch his soul. But everyone knew it was just an unfortunate accident. Or, as the pitchfork clung to the young boy’s jacket on that dark windy night, perhaps the devil had played a part in his unfortunate demise.