Places with rich history tend to cultivate ghost stories, inviting visitors to suspend disbelief and let their imaginations take over. Kalispell’s Conrad Mansion is no exception, with skin-prickling stories connecting the past to the present.
On Oct. 7, the museum staff at the mansion will share their own version of the famous building’s ghost stories during the second annual Ghost Tour as the Halloween season arrives.
According to Mike Kofford, executive director of the mansion’s museum, the public is clearly interested in the mansion’s paranormal potential; at the end of tours, people often ask about specters or spooky scenarios.
Responding to the interest, museum staff created the Ghost Tour last year. All the lights in the mansion will be off during the tour save for a spotlight on the stairs and the electric candles each guest carries to eight stations. At each stop, a member of the mansion staff or the community will tell their personal ghost story.
Some of the storytellers still refuse to enter the rooms in which they had their eerie experiences, Kofford said.
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The Conrad Mansion, built by Charles Conrad in 1895, has a notable Halloween history, Kofford said, and was the site of one of the most famous parties the state had ever seen in October of 1920.
Each floor in the house had a different theme, ranging from “Hell” in the basement – where service staff dressed as devils and there were burned logs roughly hewn into human shapes – to the second floor’s “Purgatory” and then “Heaven” on the third floor.
Kofford said the mansion was still receiving letters in the 1960s touting the Halloween party of 1920.
While he kept some of the scary stories secret so as to not ruin the tour’s surprises, Kofford divulged a few memorable incidents during a walk through the mansion last week.
The Violet Room sits on the second floor, just down the hall from Alicia Conrad’s impressive bedroom. It once was a guest room and painted violet during the house’s rehabilitation after Alicia gave the house to the city of Kalispell in 1974.
One night in the early 1970s, the man responsible for painting the room was working alone in the house. He heard footsteps drawing near.
He turned, looking for the source of the noise, and reportedly saw a woman in a white dress, walking down the hallway.
The painter put his brush down and did not return for a week.
Kofford said the painter identified the woman as Alicia “Lettie” Conrad, Charles Conrad’s wife, and the dress as her wedding gown, which, coincidentally, was found in the mansion’s basement the day after the reported Violet Room apparition.
The dress is now displayed on the master bedroom’s balcony overlooking the great hall.
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As he made his way toward the master bedroom, Kofford explained the near impossibility of breaking into the mansion unnoticed.
“We have a very complex alarm system,” he said, which includes cameras, pressure pads, door-to-wall connecting sensors and more.
He stopped in the Antique Room, another guest room on the second floor. The Conrad Mansion hosts an annual Christmas bazaar, filling each room with artisans’ wares. This particular space housed the works of a local painter at a recent function.
Kofford said that during the bazaar, he was the last person in the house each night, making sure everything was locked and in place. His assistant was the first to arrive at the mansion in the mornings.
Despite this routine and the security system, each morning during the bazaar, the same three paintings were removed from their wire hangings and stacked in the middle of the Antique Room.
“Apparently whoever comes in here during the night doesn’t like these paintings because it’s always the same ones,” Kofford said.
He suspects Lettie Conrad.
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Kofford acknowledged he has never seen an apparition, but being alone in the old, Victorian house at night has caused his skin to prickle with the sense that someone – or something – was watching him.
It’s not a threatening or sinister feeling, he said as he climbed the narrow staircase to the third floor. The mansion staff members who believe they have had a ghostly experience describe it more like a visit from the family.
“They’re people [for whom] this seemed to represent the best time of their life and they just want to hang out a little longer,” Kofford said.
The third floor has the most reported paranormal experiences, Kofford said. When he’s there by himself, Kofford announces himself before walking in.
“I say, ‘Hey, it’s me, don’t do anything; I’m coming up to turn the lights out.”
The most commonly reported apparition is a little girl with sausage curls framing her face who peeks out the third-floor windows. Kofford said this would likely represent a young Alicia Conrad, Charles and Lettie Conrad’s daughter.
Rooms on the top level include the children’s play area and Charles Conrad’s “sky office,” where he spent a lot of his time before dying of complications of diabetes and tuberculosis, Kofford said.
While standing in the main space of the third floor, Kofford tells a tale about another of the mansion’s apparitions: Grandmother Stanford.
It begins with a window washer who got lost on his first day of work at the mansion. He wasn’t sure where he was supposed to go and knocked on the front door. It opened, revealing an “older, plump gal” in a black gown with buttons down the front.
A white scarf covered her head, holding her hair back in a way that would have been stylish a couple of centuries ago. The window washer asked where his crew was, and the woman pointed up. He thanked her, headed upstairs and joined his coworkers.
When the man asked the others who the strange lady downstairs was, he was met with quizzical looks and assurances that the crew was alone in the house.
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Kofford noted that the tour is only for guests who are at least 18 years old, as the staff does not want to be responsible for scaring children. There are plenty more stories, he said, and he learned of at least 10 new tales last year.
Ending last week’s brief tour, Kofford reiterated his opinion that the alleged apparitions just seem to want to revisit the heyday of their previous lives.
“It was their dream house,” he said, adding with a laugh, “So, I guess you can take it with you.”
For tickets, visit the Conrad Mansion gift shop at 330 Woodland Ave. or call 406-755-2166. Tickets cost $8.