The Ghost of Blackfeet Nation

by Eva Pohler

  Tanya shuddered. “Geez.”

  “The most recent owner was a single man in his forties, I think,” Sue said. “He lived there until he died of a heart attack in 1973. He had no living relatives or close friends, so no one knows if he ever experienced anything unusual, or if his death was anything more than a regular heart attack.”

  “Hopefully, that’s all it was,” Ellen said.

  “No one’s occupied the house since 1973,” Sue said. “The tribe has tried to sell it many times, but its reputation keeps potential buyers away. We’re the first people to ask to look at the property in over ten years.”

  “Wow.” Ellen could only imagine the condition the house must be in, to have been vacant for so long. “Does it have running water and electricity?”

  “The tribal secretary wasn’t sure when I asked,” Sue replied. “But either way, this property is a steal. And from what I can tell using Google Earth, it has amazing views, not to mention its proximity to the park.”

  Ellen was glad they had decided to ship their equipment to Glacier Park Lodge rather than lug it around on the train. Spirits capable of possession and possibly murder would require every instrument and machine they had for a proper investigation. She’d been an emotional wreck for months and wasn’t sure she was up for the challenge, but she refused to turn back, and she hoped Tanya would feel the same.

  “I’ll go with you to the park,” Tanya finally said. “I’m dying to see it. But I don’t know if I want to help with the paranormal investigation. I’ll think about it.”

  “Thank you,” Sue said. “Just having you along on the trip makes all the difference.”

  Ellen noticed the corners of Tanya’s mouth lift into a barely perceptible smile.

  “Sue’s right,” Ellen said. “You do what you feel comfortable doing. You don’t need to step foot on the reservation.”

  “I do if we still plan to hit the casino,” she said, her face back to its normal color.

  “True,” Ellen said with a laugh. “And we still plan to do that. Don’t we, Sue?”

  “Absolutely.” Sue grinned. “Now, let’s see about those margaritas!”

  Chapter Two: Glacier National Park

  Glacier Park Lodge was within walking distance of the station. As Ellen led the way across the parking lot in the late afternoon, pulling her luggage behind her, she breathed in the cool mountain air—a pleasant change from the hot, humid days in San Antonio. Even in July, the air was crisp and dry and delightful here, and the mountain views exhilarated and rejuvenated her.

  “Look!” Tanya cried. “Bighorn sheep!”

  Ellen followed Tanya’s finger across the parking lot, to where two Bighorn sheep were meandering between parked cars, as if the parking lot were a natural part of the landscape.

  “Oh, wow!” Sue said. “They must be used to all of this.”

  As they stopped to watch the animals, Ellen wanted nothing more than to pull out her sketch pad and capture the moment. Instead, she plucked her phone from her purse and snapped a photo.

  “We’ll have plenty of time for that,” Sue said of the photo. “Let’s get checked in, shall we?”

  Ellen was pleased by the high ceilings built from massive firs—at least forty-feet high—in the lobby of Glacier Park Lodge and by the huge stone fireplace in the middle of the room, surrounded by couches and chairs and brightly colored pillows. Later, she was even more pleased by the views from her balcony looking out onto the Rocky Mountains. The floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding balcony door made it possible for her to enjoy the views from indoors, too.

  Her paranormal investigative equipment had been brought up and set down in the middle of the room. She now shoved the boxes containing her full-spectrum cameras, passive infrared motion detectors, large EMF recorder, and the electromagnetic pump under the table and desk and put her duffle bag of thermometers, batteries, handheld EMF detectors, sketch pad, and Ouija Board onto the floor of the closet. Not for the first time, she thought about how far she’d come since their very first flip—the Gold House in San Antonio. She’d been so adamant that there were no such things as ghosts, and although they had discovered that more than a ghost was contributing to the strange phenomena there, her world had been turned upside down. Now, here she was, nearly five years later, one of the country’s leading experts in paranormal studies. After their project in Boulder City, she and her friends had been interviewed on two of the three major television networks and had articles written about them in multiple major publications.

  As the hours passed, the temperature dropped from the mid-seventies to the low sixties. Ellen wondered why she spent most summers in the Texas heat when she could go anywhere in the world. Her kids were living their own lives and rarely visited anymore. What was keeping her at home?

  She and Brian had planned to travel the world together. That had ended six months ago not far from where she was now standing, one state away at Yellowstone National Park.

  On Wednesday morning, Ellen and her friends met their tour guide—a man named Rich Falcon—before dawn in the lodge parking lot, where they climbed into his van and headed west to Lake McDonald.

  From behind the wheel, their driver, who looked to be in his mid to late sixties and who wore his long white hair pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, asked, “Is this your first visit to Glacier National Park?” His voice was gravelly, and he had a habit of nodding his head as he spoke.

  “It is,” Sue said in the middle seat beside Tanya. “Are you from this area?”

  “Yes,” the man replied as he turned onto the main road. “My ancestors lived here more than ten thousand years ago. I was born and raised here and will eventually die here.”

  “Sounds like I picked the right guide then,” Sue said with a smile.

  “I’m not like any other guide,” he said with a sideways glance and another nod of his head. “It took me a long time to get my license approved by the corporation that controls most of the businesses around here. They didn’t want me to tell the stories of my people.”

  “I wonder why,” Tanya said.

  “Greed and intolerance,” he replied. “They tried to make us invisible and to disconnect us from what was our land for thousands of years.”

  “I’m glad to hear that things are changing,” Ellen said from the third seat.

  “That’s the one constant in this world,” he said as he made another turn. “Change. And it’s not always for the better.”

  “He’s quite a philosopher,” Sue whispered.

  Tanya leaned forward. “Why do they call the road you’re taking us to Going to the Sun Road?”

  “It’s named for Going to the Sun Mountain,” he said. He spoke with a rhythmic cadence that seemed in tune with his nods. “You see, my people believe that the Sun is the Creator. We call him Napi, or Old Man. Further north of here is another mountain called Chief Mountain. We Blackfeet believe it was the only land not submerged in water at the beginning of time. And we believe that the end of time will come with its destruction. To us, it’s the center of the earth.”

  “How interesting,” Sue said.

  “We call this whole area here the backbone of the earth,” he added. Then he pointed northwest and said, “That’s Going to the Sun Mountain. Going to the Sun Road will lead us to it. A long time ago, one of my people, named Tail Feathers, said that that mountain would be the best place for a spirit quest, for going to the Sun. And that’s how it got its name.”

  “Do your people still go on spirit quests?” Tanya asked.

  “Oh, yes. It’s an important part of our way of life. We go to a sacred place south of here, to an area known as Badger-Two Medicine, where Napi created the land and all the people who inhabit it.”

  “Is it part of the reservation?” Tanya asked.

  “Unfortunately, no,” he said. “In 1895, we were promised that the Badger-Two Medicine would be a communal space that everyone could use for hunting, fishing, and other recreational acti
vities. It’s where we practiced many of our religious rituals and ceremonies when such things were outlawed. We continue to do so today.”

  “Wait,” Ellen interrupted. “Are you saying it was against the law at one time to practice your religion?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Rich Falcon said with an emphatic nod. “There was a time when being an Indian was considered bad. From about 1890 to the late seventies, we could only be ourselves in secret.”

  “That’s horrible,” Tanya said.

  “How ironic, considering that the earliest immigrants came here to escape religious persecution,” Sue pointed out.

  “It gets worse,” Rich said as he turned along the curving road. “In the early 1980s, during the Reagan administration, leases were granted to oil and gas companies that would allow drilling in the Badger-Two Medicine.”

  “But what about the agreement?” Tanya asked.

  “It was ignored. We fought against the oil companies for decades and put a halt to their plans. Just this year, we finally got the US government to pull the last of the fifteen original leases. It only took us forty years.”

  Ellen wondered how she’d never heard about the battle between the oil companies and the native people.

  “Your tribe must be relieved to have that behind you,” Sue said.

  “We won’t be at peace until we get our bill passed—a bill to protect the land as a cultural heritage area, so it won’t ever be vulnerable to drilling or other kinds of development again. In fact, there’s one oil and gas company, Solonex, run by a man named Sidney Longfellow, that won’t let it go. They’re suing the federal government for breach of contract, hoping to get their lease reinstated.”

  “Oh, no,” Tanya said. “Do you think they have a chance of winning?”

  “There’s no telling,” their driver said.

  Ellen gazed across the landscape to the south, where the plains became rolling hills. “That’s the Badger-Two Medicine, out there?”

  “Beyond those hills,” he said.

  “Can people who aren’t members of the tribe go on spirit quests?” Ellen asked, wondering if the experience might help her to fill the gaping hole in her heart.

  “Sometimes, with permission and guidance,” he said. “It’s usually for men, but in recent years, women have gone on spirit quests, too.”

  “I’m glad to hear that the tribe is keeping up with the times,” Sue said.

  They rode in silence for many minutes. The sun was just beginning to rise when they finally turned onto Going to the Sun Road and drove through the west entrance of the park toward Apgar Village, where they stopped to use the restroom and to buy a few postcards and cups of coffee.

  “Oh, look,” Sue said, holding up a spray bottle that read Bear Assault Deterrent Spray. “We should each buy one of these, just in case.”

  Ellen shook her head. “It’s a scam and a waste of money. Don’t fall for it, Sue.”

  “You’ll feel differently if we come upon a Grizzly,” Sue said.

  Rich, who had overheard the conversation from a few feet away, said, “The best thing to do when faced with a bear is to talk softly to it as you slowly back away. Don’t run, don’t scream, and don’t attack, even with that spray bottle.”

  “I’d listen to him,” Tanya said.

  Sue returned the spray back to the rack. “I guess he’s the expert. Plus, if worse comes to worse, I can always use my gun.”

  They followed Rich from the center to a pier overlooking the lake, where five mountain peaks nestled together beyond the shoreline.

  By seven a.m., they were back on the road and driving toward Lake McDonald Lodge. Since the plan was to drive along Going to the Sun Road as the sun rose in the east, they didn’t stop until they’d passed the lodge and reached the roaring McDonald Falls. They snapped a few photos before continuing onward.

  The sunrise over the mountains was breathtaking. Rich Falcon pulled over a few times along the way to show them such sights as a valley full of antelope, a stream where two large moose had a morning drink, and cascades of turquoise rapids tumbling across the river rocks.

  In some places, the road seemed dangerously narrow with the flat rock face of a mountain on one side and a dangerously steep drop of hundreds of feet on the other. Ellen noticed Tanya clutching her safety harness and Sue leaning away from her window and the deep ravine. Only their driver seemed unaffected by the perilous path.

  On the way to another stop at the Big Bend pullout, they drove past a stretch of rock, at least a hundred feet long, with cascading water dripping from the flat face of a mountain.

  “This is known as Weeping Wall,” Rich Falcon said.

  Not far from Weeping Wall, he parked and led them down a paved path past purple wildflowers to a breathtaking view of four mountains nested together behind a deep valley where white flowers bloomed.

  As beautiful as the landscape was, Ellen was drawn back to the flat-faced mountain on the opposite side of the road with its never-ending tears. While her friends remained behind at the Big Bend overlook, Ellen trekked past parked cars to get closer to Weeping Wall.

  Ellen stood there, mesmerized, as tears of her own seeped from the corners of her eyes and slipped down her cheeks, just as the natural springs leaked from the stone wall and onto passing cars. The weeping wall symbolized what she was feeling. Her world was changing in ways she couldn’t control. Her parents were dead. Her husband was dead. Her children were living lives of their own, away from her. She and her brother rarely saw one another. She was untethered. If it weren’t for Sue and Tanya, she’d feel utterly alone in the world. It took an act of bravery to face life in such a state—bravery and a lot of tears.

  It was after nine o’clock in the morning when they reached the highest point of Going to the Sun Road at Logan Pass on the continental divide. They stopped to walk along a few of the trails to soak in the majesty before heading another five miles north to eat breakfast in the Ptarmigan Dining Room at Many Glacier Hotel, overlooking Swiftcurrent Lake and the snow-covered mountains beyond it.

  They invited Rich Falcon to join them, but he said he wasn’t hungry and would be waiting outside on the deck, having a smoke.

  “I think I understand the meaning of the word medicine, as the Blackfeet and other tribes use it,” Ellen said over her pancakes. “This place feels like much needed medicine for my soul.”

  “I know what you mean,” Tanya agreed.

  Sue took a sip of her coffee before saying, “You still haven’t really explained why you and Brian aren’t seeing each other anymore. Are you officially broken up? Or has he just been super busy?”

  Ellen’s stomach clenched.

  “Sue,” Tanya chastised.

  “Excuse me for being worried about our dearest friend,” Sue said, as if concern and not curiosity, were the reason for her questions.

  Ellen took a deep breath. She’d planned to talk to them about it at some point on the trip, but she’d hoped to be the one to broach the subject. As she pushed a bite of pancake around on her plate, she fought tears. Her friends were quiet. Whether they were silenced by feelings of awkwardness or were patiently waiting for Ellen to reply, she didn’t know.

  Finally, Ellen said, “Brian accused me of keeping him at arm’s length.” She put down her fork and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “And he was right.”

  Her friends looked at her with sympathetic frowns, but she avoided their gaze as she got up and excused herself before finding the restroom. She entered a stall, sat on the commode, and closed her eyes, where she saw Weeping Wall, as if she were standing in front of it.

  Ellen and her friends spent the rest of the day meandering along the trails at Saint Mary Lake, where they visited more amazing falls and took in more spectacular mountain vistas. Although the area was full of tourists, there were plenty of secluded places along the paths where Ellen and her friends felt fully immersed in nature.

  Ellen kept expecting Sue to complain about her hurtin
g feet, or her shortness of breath, or her increased appetite from the exercise; instead, she was the perfect picture of congeniality. Ellen supposed her friend was trying to make up for what had happened at breakfast. As the hours passed, Ellen was less and less aware of the hole in her heart and more and more awed by the beauty surrounding her. By the time Rich Falcon met up with them at the Saint Mary Visitor Center to return them to Glacier Park Lodge, she felt giddy with happiness.

  “Before we leave this place, I want to show you something,” Rich said as he led them from the parking lot in the opposite direction of the lake and visitor center, toward a wooded area.

  “What is it?” Sue asked.

  “Trust me. You want to see this.”

  “Can you make it, Sue?” Tanya asked. “How are your feet?”

  “I guess we’re about to find out,” she said, “though this does seem off the beaten path.”

  “It is,” Rich said. “Like I told you, I’m not like the other guides. Just stay close.”

  Ellen exchanged worried glances with her friends.

  Not wanting to offend their guide, Ellen said nothing as she followed him away from civilization and into the thick forest, thinking the whole while that this was exactly how serial killers lured their victims into out-of-the-way places.

  After about ten minutes of traipsing beneath the tall firs and hemlocks, Rich said in a low voice, “Just beyond this stretch of trees is a place where grizzlies come to fish.”

  Ellen stopped in her tracks and whispered, “Did you say grizzlies? As in Grizzly bears?”

  Rich Falcon lifted his brows and smiled. “What other kind of grizzlies are there?”

  Sue and Tanya stopped too.

  Tanya said, “I think we should head back.”

  “Will you trust me?” he asked them.

  “No offense, Rich, but we don’t know you,” Sue said.

  “If you can see them while they’re in the lake, they won’t bother you,” he said. “And this time of day, I guarantee you they’re in the lake.”