Social Distancing: Ghost Tours

Explore Haunted Sites In Our Region This Halloween

If you want a truly haunting experience this Halloween season without being haunted by the specter of COVID-19, skip the costume parties and trick or treating. Go for the real frights…ghosts.
We live in a pretty haunted area.
And you can explore these places while safely social distancing…unless you count ghosts.
But I don’t think ghosts can carry a virus.

Let’s start close to home at Bonanzaville in West Fargo. All those old buildings, you’re bound to find a few spirits lurking around.
Even the staff there have reported eerie things happening that you can’t simply explain.
We’ve sent crews there for stories, and the came back spooked by what they saw. They saw a pillow indent with no one on top of it.
They host ghost tours every year, including this year on Halloween night.
They provide EMF protectors to measure electromagnetic changes, and a voice box to catch ghostly calls. Sadly, this year they’re sold out.

But there are more spirits supposedly lurking about in the metro. You can head to Trollwood Park in North Fargo, which used to be a pauper’s cemetery next to the old county hospital way back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s.
They tried to dig up the graves after the park district bought the land, but they didn’t get all of them.
In fact, people discovered what are though to be human bones just six months ago.
There are rumors of ghostly activity there, including a woman in a blue dress who is said to appear near her favorite willow tree.

Another building that might be haunted, the Lake Region Heritage Center in Devils Lake. It used to be the city’s post office from around 1910 to the 1970’s.
There are two spirits that supposedly haunt the place.
It could be Lillian Wineman, a progressive woman who grew up in Devils Lake in the early 1900’s.
Her collection of Native American artifacts is at the museum.

Or it could be Charles Sneesby. He was a Devils Lake Police officer killed at the post office during a botched robbery in 1924.
I’ve been there plenty of times. You do sometimes suddenly get a shiver while you’re in the building. Could it be ghosts? Or a 110-year-old drafty building?

Now let’s head over to Minnesota, and Otter Tail County.
Emily actually did a story last year about Lilly Field.
She was brutally murdered by a family handyman on a pig farm near Dalton, Minnesota at just 15-year-old.
For generations, people say they’ve seen glimpses of her spirit at her family’s old farm, walking the woods in the area.
Or, people say they’ve heard unexplained pig squeals, which begs the question: ghost pigs?

And finally on our tour, the famed Fergus Falls State Hospital, also known as the Kirkbride.
Similar mental asylums were built around the country, named for Dr. Thomas Kirkbride.
This one opened in 1895.
The Fergus Falls facility was one of the last to close according to Roadside America, back in 2008.
There’s bound to be some eerie feelings at a place that housed patients for more than a century.
There has been a battle over what to do with the building for the last decade or so, with some wanting to tear it down. So you might want to go visit. But just don’t go in. The building itself is off limits.

Which haunted places did I miss? Tell me the stories from your town.

Also. let me know your Halloween ideas and plans on Facebook and Twitter.