Ghost goose and more

The fall season had come. The school had a holiday for teachers so my family got to visit my aunt and uncle in Williston, North Dakota. They were excited. This was early 80s and they had gotten the use of a new van for a weekend to decide if they wanted it or not.

The decision was to go geese hunting taking my cousins, myself, two uncles and a dog to the countryside of North Dakota. They got up early and either I did not have a good coat or I was not ready for the fall season of North Dakota prairies.

We got to the hunting area around 440 AM and set up the decoy geese. I was freezing. Let's be honest I was a little kid and this was my first hunting experience. My ears, nose and fingers were frostbitten by the time the first group of geese came around 8 AM.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Around 10 AM we were with three geese and we waited for more. I am not sure if they flew around us or what. We could see the v of geese but they would circle and never come close.

So around 11 AM we all got into the van. The geese in the back with us kids and the dog. We were speeding a bit down a dirt road due to the idea that my uncles could get back for a football game or something. The dog started going a bit nuts. We kids tried to hold the dog down not knowing what his problem was.

The van hit a bump. And the dog started going nuts so much that we lost hold of him. We hit another bump in the dirt road. Then a bag in the back of the van started moving. The garbage bag that held one of the geese got up and started flapping around. To say this was something terrifying would be an understatement. I was 9 or 10 and my cousins of a similar age were faced with a bizarre ghost of a goose, a matted dog and dirt road bumps.

My uncle's voices were raised. We lide off the dirt road onto a field and opened the door and the ghost goose just flipped itself out along with a crazed dog going after it. Biting the bag and flinging it out into the field.

My one uncle got out and took the head off the ghost goose. That would have been the end of the ghost goose story. However, that goose was eaten for Thanksgiving and biting into a piece of turkey my uncle lost a filling because of buckshot that had not been removed.

People forget. When I was a child around 9 or 10 years of age. Ghost stories were told often to me. From the old farmhouse outside of Williston, North Dakota, where a pig with bright red eyes would come and kill the dogs in the yard. To the Missouri Club outside of Williston. Where several ghosts did different intriguing things. Those are the years where ghosts were more than real. Now that I know they are real. All those stories just make me wonder in my mind. Missouri Club was a diner, dance hall, pool tables, bar with more truth to the stories behind them than not.

The upstairs apartment that held two small bedrooms, a bath, with a toilet and a tiny room for a television refrigerator, and two sofas had several interesting ghosts. A drummer that had either died by accident, suicide, or foul play. His story was that every so often a band member from the traveling bands that stayed there would see him in the mirror in the bathroom. The outcome of which was several times they broke the mirror upstairs until a bright shiny piece of metal was used to replace the last mirror. The ghost story then went away for a time.

Downstairs the bar area had two or three ghosts depending on who told what story or how things went. There was the lady who croaked in the bathroom who loved Dolly Parton songs. So when the women’s bathroom door would blow open without there being any wind along with for no apparent reason the jukebox playing with nobody pushes or paying for “Burning the Midnight Oil” that story got told often. She had come from money. Went into the ladies room after snorting some drugs and passed out and died there until the cleaning lady found her a little past 1 AM. Sad story.

Then there was the bartender that had gotten into a fight with a customer. He had pool stick injury from the fight and either died from the head wound or cut. That story kept on changing. Anyway, people closing up the bar swore that clean glasses on the bar counter would have the glasses fly down the counter and smash to the floor after his death for some time.

Then there were the stories of a customer or two that had driven towards home drunk and did not make it. The parking lot where ghost cars were and scared many people trying to make it home during the night.

The one that unnerves most people the most still is the dead dogs. Club Missouri was outside of city limits in front of an old farm, to the sides was a farm equipment yard, and some type of industrial building to the other-side.

Now, the old farm house behind the Club. Well, the building was spooky. The farm was lived in and had three huge dogs. Anyway one Halloween someone either murdered those dogs or according to local lore a demented pig did. However, the ghost story was a demented pig as big as a three dogs with red eyes had torn them apart while fighting them. Whichever is true the red eyed pig story still is told every Halloween.

Christian followers’ goal

Heaven is a goal

Religion is tool for that goal

I hope for this goal

Salvation being the goal

To help others is the goal

Inside the bibles goal

Almighty’s goal

Needing a goal

Followers hope for this goal

Onward towards the goal

Loving words for the goal

Love is part of the goal

Open your heart to the goal

Winning the race is the goal

Eternity is the goal

Reality is part of the goal

Goal

There is a town in eastern Busby, Montana's home of the Northern Cheyenne, where the roads at night are not safe to travel or hitchhike. People talk of the hooded man who picks up hitchhikers and takes them to hell. The town has more murders per thousand than Washington D.C. but very little is said because of the location is so scary. The town has no store nor gas station. The post office is run out of a home converted to having post office boxes in the kitchen. The ghosts are many, and few do tell of the tales of who is missing or who has gone to hell. The story most people say is "oh, they have gone south" which may mean at this moment that or may mean a shallow grave. However, just a few miles away is the only bar for miles around. Jim Town is the name. The world's largest collection of beer cans in the Genesis world records in the 80s. That bar is haunted by no less than 30 ghosts, says the tales. The first is about an old drunk who walked home in the middle of the road and was run over and dragged for six miles with his body parts smeared all along the road. You see the driver was drunk too and did not realize he had hit someone. The body appears at the door of the bar every time another person passes away in one of the towns close by. He is seen walking down the road. Then just passing the cattle guards he starts to fall apart. The second is an old Indian who got in a knife fight with the bartender. He bled out on the pool table. That occurred around the 4th of July, and well the bar has had to replace seven pool tables because each year since the table has pooled blood in it and sticks to high hell. The third ghost is a girl who was supposedly beautiful; she was fooling around with a lady's husband. The lady waited until she was drunk and took the girl out and butchered her and placed her skin on the fence behind the bar. She appears to women who use the lady's bathroom. That ghost shows up so often that the women always go outside to pee near the fence where she was butchered, and they pee there nowadays. The fourth ghost body is supposed to still be on the property. There is a pile of beer cans that has been collected since the 1960s. According to legend in the 70s a white guy climbed to the top of the pile, and the pile caved in on him. No one knew he was missing for days. His car was stolen, and he had been a loser so no one was paying attention until his parents started to look for him. That was when people remembered him going outside saying he was going to play king of the mountain. The beer can mountain moves every so often. They say the movement is caused by his ghost trying to get out of the mountain. Only his hand was found years later, and that is how the story started on that one. Then there was the bartender who got stumped to death in the 60s. His ghost is supposed to throw beer at people, but I have not seen that one. Like I said there are many ghosts there. There are at least 30 stories I have heard and who knows how many more I have not counted. The last story I will tell tonight's of the cowboy drummer who was playing there on a Friday night. He had gotten wasted and for whatever reason got stuck on playing only one musical beat all not night long. He went outside to pee and was bitten by a rattlesnake without his knowledge. He finished his gig and got into his pick-up to sleep off his hangover only to never wake up. The music he kept on playing was the song "Playing with the Queen of Hearts." All I can say is when I was cleaning up the place in the mornings sometimes the juke box started playing that song without anyone paying for the music.