Beyond Spirit Tailings (ISBN 0972152245)

Beyond Spirit Tailings is a spooky treasure for ghost story lovers everywhere.:
Read aloud by the author and interpretive historian Ellen Baumler, and featuring a bonus music CD by composer and pianist Philip Aaberg, Beyond Spirit Tailings is an abridged audiobook on CD about historical Montana ghost stories handed down through generations. Combining evocative music with tales ranging from the story of the hitchhiking specter of a priest to a departed Hamilton socialite who spreads the scent of roses, Beyond Spirit Tailings is a spooky treasure for ghost story lovers everywhere. Highly recommended.

Award of Merit:
Beyond Spirit Tailings is the recipient of a 2006 Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History.

Strongly Disagree with Cbauman:
As a lifetime resident of Montana and a professional historian, I have to disagree with Cbauman's review of this wonderful book. From my conversations with the author over the years, the intent of the book is to not only tell a good story, but provide good historical contexts of of the times, people, and events that lead to the ghostly encounters. The stories tell you a great deal about Montana's history from a perspective that you don't ordinarily get in most history books. These are community stories as much as they are ghost stories and the way they are presented makes them relevant and interesting for skeptics and true believers. For any student of history and for anybody looking for a great ghost story, I strongly recommend this book. The stories will both haunt you and provide a great inside look at Montana's history from a new perspective.

More Mysterious Montana Stories:
Ellen Baumler continues in this book where she left off in her earlier book "Spirit Tailings." While "Spirit Tailings" concentrated on the many haunted sites of the historic mining communities of Virginia City, Butte, and Helena, she ranges further afield in location and subject matter. Not all the stories in this book are about ghosts or haunted places. Some are about mysterious events, and there is one about Montana's famous Flathead Lake Monster. Baumler's approach is that of a professional historian (she is interpretive historian for the Montana Historical Society) trying to make sense of the many anecdotes brought to her by people she meets in her job, while being respectful of their experiences. As she terms it, she writes "history with a twist." This is why the stories are based in thorough historical research to try and find possible historical reasons for the things that people tell her. Baumler starts with a number of short anecdotes in the first story, "Beginnings," including bits on the Richards House (Lenox Addition house in first collection); Eighth Avenue house; Helena High School; a house on Hillsdale/site of Hangman's Tree near corner of Blake and Highland (and a couple other houses in that neighborhood); a new house site in a heavily wooded area of Jefferson County (north of Helena), the Harlem Hotel (in Harlem of course!), unnamed houses in Havre and Shelby; Virginia City's Fairweather Inn and Bonanza Inn; Virginia City Theater and Opera House. "The Sleeping Buffalo" is about a Native American sacred place, now called Sleeping Buffalo Rock. Originally it was located on the Milk River at Cree Crossing, then it was removed from its ancient site by white people to Trafton Park in Malta, and finally to the junction of Montana 243 and US 2. "Fruit of the Hangman's Tree" relates the history of the infamous hangman's tree of Helena, which was located on what is now the corner of Hillsdale and Blake, the "Boot Hill" graves associated, and some of the eerie happenings in houses in this quiet old neighborhood. "The Hoo Doo Block" is about an unlucky series of events in an area in Fort Benton, Block 25 (now Block 164). "Digging Up the Dead" is a tragic and spooky tale covering Benton Avenue Cemetery (mention also of Boot Hill, the pioneer City Cemetery (now Central School), and Forestvale Cemetery. "Speaking with Artifacts: Conversations with George" introduces the reader to a Helena-based dowser who does "psychic archaeology," George McMullen. He has traveled to and dowsed many Native American sites, including Hellgate Canyon (in Broadwater Co., not far from Helena); in the story he also does psychometry (reading the impressions) of some historical artifacts. "The Hanging of Peter Pelkey" is about a brutal murder on a ranch between Helena and East Helena, the execution of the murderer (buried in what is now Robinson Park), and the mysterious ghost lights at the ranch. "Celestia Alice Earp" is a story of a murder by a pioneer woman's stalker and the victim's burial in Bozeman. "Legacy of the Grant-Kohrs Ranch" lets the reader in on the history, secrets and spooky goings-on at the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Landmark in the Deer Lodge Valley. Also a mention of the thermal cone (a sacred Native American site), and furtrade rendezvous site at the Warm Springs State Hospital, about 15 miles away. "A Ghost Within a Ghost" is a story about a scary night many years ago at the historic ruins of old Fort Assinniboine. "School Spirit" is a look at urban legends and student tales about the University of Montana-Western in Dillon (Old Main Hall), Montana State University in Bozeman (the old theater now torn down and replaced as of 2007); University of Montana in Missoula (Brantly Hall and University Hall). Most of this story is devoted to Helena's Carroll College, and its stories of St. Charles Hall (including the urban legend of the third story bathroom), Borromeo Hall, and St. Albert's Hall. It also tells the story of Father Paul Kirchen, who is said to still hitchhike around Helena, trying to help people as he did in life. This last bit hits home personally, as I attended Carroll in 1979-1980, and I used to visit with Father Kirchen in his office all the time, and he was truly a living saint. "The Centerville Ghost" is the story of a 19th century hoax that put a scare into one of Butte's outlying communities. "Remnants of a Copper King" covers the ghostly happenings at Riverside, the Marcus Daly Mansion in the Bitterroot Valley, near Hamilton. "Ghostly Transport" is about a phantom train seen in 1893 in the Bitterroot Valley. "The Bishop of All Outdoors" relates the tragedy of a murder-suicide in Havre. "Stranger at the Door" is my favorite in the collection, as I currently (2007) live a block away from the site where the events all took place. It is a very creepy story about Catholic Hill (now called Tower Hill, site of the famous firetower "Guardian of the Gulch") in Helena, the various buildings and historic activities there, notably Immaculata Hall, and probably the scariest story in the entire book, about a "stranger at the door" of one of the Tower Hill Apartments. "Late Night Fright at the Fairweather Inn" adds more stories about Alder Gulch's Virginia City and Nevada City, including the Sedman House/Junction Hotel, the Fairweather Inn, and the Elling House; this entry revolves around the filming of a spooky overnight stay by the FOX network for "Real Scary Stories" in 2000. "Spirited Victoria Charmer" is a house which attracted national attention at one time as the "House of Screams," the Zakos house haunting in Missoula, which was featured in FATE magazine in August 1975. "The Adams Hotel" is a haunted hotel in Lavina, north of Billings. "The Mysterious Death of Thomas Walsh" is the story of the unexplained death of Montana's Senator Thomas Walsh, who died on a train to Washington, D.C., where he was due to be appointed to the cabinet of President Theodore Roosevelt. "Fire in the Snow" covers the 1945 crash of a C-47 transport plane in Billings, and the reported haunting of the Depot Antique Mall, originally the Sawyer Store, and the store's refrigerated vault where the remains of the crash victims were kept for a time. "Montana Nessie: Flathead Flossie" is a cryptozoological entry about sightings of the Flathead Lake monster. "Laura's Canaries" is the story of the Stonehouse Restuarant in Helena's Reeder's Alley, and the "bird lady" who once lived there. Baumler is a great storyteller, and this collection is a nice mixture of ghosts and historic mysteries ideal for the Montana traveller. (...)

Just Short of Hair Raising:
Having read her "Spirit Tailings" books and taken one of her tours, I greatly respect Ms. Baumler's knowledge of Montana history and folklore. Whatever one's beliefs regarding ghosts and their attachments and activities, the existence of the stories and what it reveals about a community and its attitudes is as fascinating as it is revelatory. While I prefer reading Baumler's stories and savoring their wealth of regional detail, this CD collection is a great introduction to the books and their subject matter, as well as a good way to hear Ms. Baumler telling her stories, if you've never been so fortunate as to attend one of her lectures or bus tours. Philip Aaberg's accompanying music is appropriately brooding and mysterious, though the presentation was occasionally intrusive. I would rather have had it "bookending" each story, or in bands of its own between each story. But this collection is great fun, and an interesting approach to historical research (without diving into the realm of seances and tabloids). Montana is lucky to have so many spooks and so dedicated a historian as Ellen Baumler to chase them.