Psst! They’re Not Alone In Old Building Workers Whisper Suspicions

In the bright light of the afternoon, employees of the Wallace Ranger Station pooh-pooh the idea that the place is haunted.

When they’re alone in its inky corridors at night, it’s a different story.

“I don’t care what nobody says,” swears 47-year-old forester Art Hilton, eyes widening. “We’ve got spooks in this building.”

The three-story, towered brick ranger station opened in 1918 as the Shoshone County Infirmary. Since the U.S. Forest Service took it over in 1974, employees have gossiped about seeing mysterious shadows, hearing disembodied voices and footsteps and generally getting bad cases of the willies.

When in groups, they’re reluctant to fess up. But one-on-one, true believers say the unruly spirits of former patients roam and sometimes dance about the creaky hallways.

“If you get people to open up, they’ll tell you. There is a ghost here,” says forest technician Jerri Park. Doors have opened and slammed shut again right in front of her, she says.

Longtime payroll employee Irene Nipp remembers the first ghost yarn Forest Service lore has to offer. “My old, old boss - in white dust - saw teeny, tiny baby footsteps across her desk when we first moved into the building.”

Nipp doesn’t discount the tales. “They used to keep dead bodies in the basement in a cooler,” she adds in a whisper. About 10 years ago, she says, a ghost reached out and touched her by telephone.

All calls to the station are routed through its switchboard. One evening, Nipp and her two children were alone there. She was at her own phone when it rang: No one forwarded the call from the switchboard, and Nipp says she was close enough to hear if the call rang into the system at all.

She picked up the receiver only to hear heavy breathing on the other end. She slammed it down. A few minutes later, it happened again. Nipp and her children scrammed.

“It scared the crap out of us,” she says.

A night watchman says he routinely heard footsteps. After awhile, he quit drawing his gun at the noises. “He just decided it was a friendly ghost,” Nipp says.

Casper or not, Hilton wants no part of it. One morning at 4 a.m., he and another forester were in the building. Hilton says he saw luminous phantoms run past him and up the stairs. Hilton screamed. That sent his partner howling and heading for the door.

“That’s a true fact,” Hilton says. “That’s all I can tell you is true fact.”

Inside and out, the Wallace Ranger Station is pretty creepy. The basement is dark and stony. An old metal door with a barred window sits propped against one wall - it was used to hole up patients who were mentally ill, station employees say.

The top floor, where some employees are afraid to set foot, is covered in dingy tile. The walls are painted dirty white and light green. Old, sagging metal beds are strewn about the place.

Forest technician Carl Ritchie’s favorite feature is an old window only visible from the fire escape outside. Inside, there’s no sign of it. “Maybe it’s like one of the Edgar Allen Poe stories,” he says, referring to the “Telltale Heart.”

Ritchie, though, thinks the ghost stories are just tall tales. He says an employee who “raced out of here like a greased cat” because of a wrathful poltergeist discovered it was only crutches a child sent clattering down some stairs.

“I lived up on the third floor in total darkness,” Ritchie says. “I walked around for six weeks, and I never felt the chill of cold breath on my spine from an abandoned spirit or anything.”

Another employee, Rona Liller, thinks the voices are just radios left on.

Hilton isn’t swayed when people poke fun at him. He wants to leave recording equipment on at night to catch the ghouls in action.

“I’ve seen the flashes go past me,” he says. “Spirits are running around here.”

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