Haunted Mammoth Hotel

If at all possible, a trip to Yellowstone National Park should be in your plans. Don't plan to get through it in just a few hours or even a day or two. Stay a week or more because that's the minimum required just to see all the jaw-dropping wonders there is to see. There's good reason this park was nicknamed "Wonderland" by early visitors. Some of those visitors were so taken by Wonderland, they never left.

One of the few lodging accommodations inside the park is the storied Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. Originally built in 1883, it was remodeled and enlarged a number of times to meet demand. In 1936, the original hotel structure was demolished and rebuilt except for the north wing which had been built in 1911. To say that unexplained things frequently happen in the hotel is a bit of an understatement.

Doors to rooms will often refuse to open and even the hotel staff cannot budge the "stuck" doors. A few minutes later, the door will open with no problem. This phenomena happens so often the cleaning staff has learned to simply go to the next room and upon finishing that room, return to the skipped room whose door now easily opens. 

One young housekeeper was in the process of cleaning a room when she went into the hall to retrieve clean towels. As soon as she was out of the room, the door slammed shut! When the door wouldn't re-open, she went into the adjoining room which had a connecting door and used her master key to get into the closed room. She found a heavy wooden dresser in the room had been moved and was blocking the door. There had been no one else in the room with the maid and there was no way anyone could have gotten in and moved the dresser in the few seconds she had been locked out. She ran to her supervisor who was on the same floor at the end of the hall and the two of them came back to the room within 2 minutes. Upon arrival, they found the door was standing open and the dresser back where it was supposed to be 6 feet away. The housekeeper swore she wasn't lying and abruptly handed her name tag to the supervisor and quit. At first, the supervisor was suspicious, but then she noticed deep scratches on the floor showing the path traveled by the heavy dresser from across the room to the door and back.

Furniture is often moved around in the storage room also. Extra beds, tables, chairs and supplies are kept in a storage room to replace any items that may get broken in the hotel. Maintenance personnel have frequently reported chairs that were once stacked against one wall will be stacked against the other wall from one entry time to the next. Once, the head maintenance supervisor had retrieved a box of light bulbs for his men to replace several which had burned out. He locked the door when he left. He received a call on his walkie-talkie for some other item almost immediately so he turned back, opened the locked door and found something was on the other side. He pushed it open to find an unopened case of toilet paper had been pushed against the door. The cases of toilet paper are kept against the far wall in the back and there is only the one door through which to enter.

The wide, usually quiet hallway on the 4th floor of the hotel where,
sometimes, a little girl's laughter and running feet can be heard.

Long-time employee's of the hotel say these unexplained matter are rather unsettling, but they have never felt threatened. The feeling is more like their resident spirit is simply mischievous and likes to play jokes. Workers and guests have reported hearing what sounds like a little girl's laughter when there are no children around. They also have heard little footsteps running in deserted hallways. Several psychics have said they felt the ghost is a very young girl whose name is Emily. There is a grave of a young girl in the Fort Yellowstone Cemetery a few yards from the hotel. Emily Sievert was the youngest daughter of Chaplain H. A. Sievert of the 9th U.S. Calvary. She died in 1903 just shy of her 2nd birthday. Perhaps this is the hotel's ghost. Perhaps little Emily is forever happy playing jokes in the hotel, teasing staff and guests alike.