Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 71 Montana cemetery gate tour www.distinctlymontana.com/cemetery174 DISTINCTLY MONTANA | DIGITAL e mysterious Fairy Steps, known to generations of Kalispell children, provided Alicia private access to her husband's grave. e stairway climbs a steep cliff from the wooded banks of the Stillwater River to the Conrad mausoleum. Local legend has it that if you count the steps on the way up and again on the way down, you will always get a different number. Most of Montana's cemeteries are places of quiet beauty, but there are a few where the dead seem to seek out the living. One of these lies on a lonely hillside in Carbon County. Coal mining brought families to settle in Bearcreek and many European immigrants are buried in its cemetery. In 1943, the Smith Mine Disaster killed 74 miners and Bearcreek became a ghost town. But that was not Bearcreek's only tragedy. A highly intuitive acquaintance and her family visited the Bearcreek Cemetery in Febru- ary 2009. She says she "saw" and talked to the spirit of a very angry man. He told her that he came to Bearcreek looking for his sister Roza and was unable to find her. He claimed he was hit by a train and killed. Research uncovered this horrific, long forgotten incident. Roza Cernic died in 1917 months before her brother came looking for her. Before he could find her, he walked out of one of Bearcreek's saloons into the path of a moving train. Killed instantly, he was buried in the cemetery's northeast corner in an unmarked grave. When a fence later enclosed the cemetery, Cernic's grave was left outside. at he never found his sister, died so violently, and was left forgotten outside the fence may help to explain his anger. While Cernic's angry spirt communicated, family members took video. e film reveals nothing odd until the last frame which clearly shows someone walking behind a bush near Cernic's grave. All five visitors can be accounted for and it was none of them. Was this the ghost of the angry man reaching out from the grave? Helena's Benton Avenue Cemetery is another haunted place, known for its several para- normal incidents. One occurred in May 2012 as fourth grade classes toured the cemetery. ree girls saw a teenager wearing a yellow dress, sitting underneath a tree. And then, they said, she disappeared. Adults discovered the nearby grave of 15-year-old Fern Marie Wilson. Newspapers document Fern's suicide in 1911. A psychic later confirmed Fern's presence in the cemetery and added another detail. She saw Fern wearing a lovely lace collar over her yellow dress. In 2014, another group of fourth graders visited the cemetery. Half a dozen of them claimed they saw Fern sitting in the tree. Describing her, several girls added a detail they could not have known: Fern was wearing the pretty lace collar over her dress. Mrs. Dunphy and the two children she cared for during a diphtheria epidemic in 1885 have also appeared at Benton Avenue. Norma Alada and Felix Kuehn did not survive, nor did Mrs. Dunphy. e three occasionally walk hand-in-hand in a grassy area between their tombstones. One cold night during an October cemetery tour, a participant saw two children and a tall woman standing quietly away from the group. Badly frightened, she fled the cemetery long before the tour was over. e experience haunted her, and she only shared it much later. She knew nothing of the epidemic nor did she know that diphtheria blocks one's airway. Yet she said she noticed right away that the children were barefoot in the cold and looked as if they had been sick a long time. All three had a strange, distorted, pinched look about their mouths, as if they were struggling to breathe. Pioneer burial grounds, sweeping park-like vistas, and restless spirits make Montana's cemeteries places where history, culture, secrets, and unexpected encounters await. Choose a cemetery to explore and see for yourself. Missoula's City Cemetery, founded in 1884, replaced the first city burial grounds in the Rattlesnake area where houses have been built over early burials. Flat embedded tombstones, characteristic of garden park cemeteries, allow unmarred sweeping views in some of areas of Kalispell's Conrad Cemetery. The mysterious Fairy Steps, known to generations of Kalispell's children, provided Alicia Conrad private access to her husband's grave. The Bearcreek Cemetery in Carbon County lies on a lonely hill. Photo by Jon Axline. Fern Marie Wilson, buried at Benton Avenue Cemetery in Helena, likes to hang around the tree behind her tombstone. B E S T L A S T P L AC E S

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