SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Handlebar Mustaches And Haunted Ground At Little Bighorn
The road has a way of sharpening the strange. While recording from Arizona, we open a listener’s account that runs from goosebumps at Gettysburg to a charged encounter at Little Bighorn—complete with a flash of a white handlebar mustache, a flurry of ghost-hunting gear, and a ranger’s timely invitation to leave. That single thread pulls us into the Stonehouse’s layered folklore, the early “ghost herders” who tended more than grounds, and the meticulous identification of Lieutenant Benjamin H. Hodson as a recurring presence tied to the battle’s grief.
We dig into the uneasy balance between curiosity and caution. Tours have routes for a reason; history sites carry legal lines and very real physical risks. Still, stories persist: lights that wake themselves, doors that resist and then yield, shadows that fold back into the walls. We explore claims of time slips on the Little Bighorn battlefield, Native traditions of portals that bend time and place, and the many reports of Custer’s ghost pacing museum corridors in utter silence. Whether you treat these accounts as folklore, psychology, or the paranormal, the landscape refuses to flatten into dates and plaques—it asks for humility, context, and respect.
You’ll hear practical field wisdom alongside vivid storytelling: how fleeting peripheral sightings can spark hours of EVP sessions, why “consequences” is more than a punchline, and how research can give a face and a name to a figure at the edge of vision. If haunted travel, American history, battlefield lore, or ghost stories are your thing, this one brings them together with care and clear eyes. Listen, share your own battlefield experiences, and help us map where history still speaks. If the episode resonates, follow the show, leave a review, and pass it to a friend who loves a good ghost story—what ground has stayed with you?
Hey everybody, it's Dr. G, Spirit Tales and Magic. It is the 17th, and it's very close to 9 o'clock in Arizona. We are not in the studio right now. We're out and about in the real world researching a story. Um, we're gonna keep the location kind of on the down low right now. We are able to get our emails, and hopefully, this is gonna transmit okay. And I don't have some of my wonderful gadgets, so I I won't know until I listen to it. But where I am to listen to it, I'm gonna have to go ahead and send it out on the air. So I'll apologize in advance if there's anything weird about it beyond the normal weird. As you know, we get a lot of mails, emails. We get things sent to us on a regular basis. And that's why we say, you know, always send your ghost stories. You can send them by snail mail. Um, in about six or seven months, the mail drop is gonna change places. But I'm gonna let you know when it does that. So you're good. You can send them the mail drop, you can email them. Um and just off the topic for just a moment. When I'm especially if I'm sending texts or emails from the phone, I tend to use talk type a lot. And of course, I would never do anything illegal and try and send a text while I'm driving, but talk type would would do it. But sometimes it screws up really bad. And while you think you've said one thing, it hears it as something else indeed. So, um, I think the email that you sent me today was done on talk type. So I'll get through it. Hey Doc, it's John. How you been? Leave my last name out of it if you would. Okay, done. You know, my wife and I were talking that we're a lot like you and Cassandra when we go on a tour, especially if it's a self-guided one, or one where the monitors of the tour tend to get ahead a little bit because it's the last one and they want to go home on time. You know, it makes it possible to, let's say, wander off and go into some restricted places from time to time. Now, while I've never been detained or arrested for trespassing or any of that, I have found that doing that can get you sometimes information that is not a part of the tour, but sometimes you encounter some spooky stuff that you know is not set up because it's not exactly a part of the tour. I hope that makes sense, and I'm sure it does to you. Yes, it does. Cassandra and I knew I've said it a lot of times. One of these days you're gonna hear a plea from me. Can you send bail money to Yeah? I I don't recommend that you do that. So let's let's stop for a minute and say that. If you go on a tour, say, of a battleship or an aircraft carrier or something like that, and you are on a tour route that you're supposed to stick to, I would advise you to stick to the route. Cassandra and I talk a lot about in the movie John Wick, where Keanu Areas has got his favorite adult beverage. He's gonna make a toast, and he says, consequences. There's a long history behind that, and maybe we'll do a podcast on that. You think it's just a line from a movie, but in in the real life world of people like that, it's um it's not. So Kissander and I do that every once in a while. We'll, you know, we'll take our favorite beverage and clink glasses and consequences. So for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. You buy a radar detector so that you can speed the police by detectors of detectors or things that block detectors so that you can't and get away with it. Measures and countermeasures, all of that. So here you are on your tour, and you wander off the beaten path and end up somewhere you're not supposed to be. There can be consequences. You can get arrested, there can be physical consequences, you can fall down a shaft, or cut yourself on something, or be my favorite tale is the Lexington, so aircraft carrier. Down in the bottom of the ship where all the ordinance is, it it comes up to the to the deck guns. The ordinance has to come up and be loaded, the powder has to come up and be loaded. That is not typically, you know, it's not stored inside the gun. That space is not very big, which if you tour those ships, you can go into the turret. And but long story short, there is a about a four-story ladder that you can shinny up to get to the gun. There's a much easier way to get in the gun, but at the time I figured that would be a hatch that would be locked, so I never tried it. And allegedly, Cassandra and I wound up, you know, down in the bowels of the beast and had to get back up to the gun by climbing a ladder. And some of the rungs on the ladder were not in any shape to climb. So, consequences, stay on the tour that you're supposed to be on. Okay, I'm done preaching now. So he goes on to say that recently I was in Gettysburg. Gettysburg was creepy, it really creeped me out, and I didn't think that it would because I'm not usually affected by things like that. The hair on my head felt like it was electric from the time we started the tour until the time that we ended it. And I thought that I would never go to a battlefield that would affect me in the way that this did. Until two days ago, when we got to see Little Bighorn battle, and we got to see the Stonehouse. Now he continues to write into mail, same thing. As I said, sometimes we're like you and Cassandra, and we get off the beaten path just a little bit every now and then. I thought I saw, let me go ahead and tell you that most of my friends have all the proper ghost hunting equipment, and I know how you feel about that doc, but they have all the meters and all the recorders and all the photography stuff. It it's like going on a camping trip when you go out with these guys to see a place. But I've been able to have access to some places that I wouldn't go to if it was just my wife and I. So they'll call and say, Hey, can you know you want to accompany us here or there? And I jump on that because I wouldn't do it otherwise. So out the corner of my eye, I think I see a man. You know, my my first glance, I said, It was Colonel Sanders, but it was a guy with a white handlebar mustache. And just a fleeting second, like out the corner of my eye, it was there and it wasn't there. Now I think that's you know pretty normal, but he goes on to say none of my friends saw it, but I told them about it, and they immediately started with their gear. They got the spirit box out and the full spectrum cameras and the recorders, and we're trying to do an EVP, and they're taking pictures. And this goes on for about a half an hour to 40 minutes. There is nothing. There's no response, and all of a sudden, you know, one of the girls in the in the group says, Are you too scared to talk to us? All I wanted to know was your name. Ben, is there anything you would like us to know? Is there something you'd like to tell us? Get out. Leave. The quietness of the situation dock was broken at that point, and Mr. Ranger came along and asked us to leave, and we obliged him. Two days we we do this tour. And I want to tell you that this battlefield does not disappoint. It's the Gettysburg, or worse, of the West. Excuse me. Doc, I know you research a lot of things. Do you have anything on Little Bighorn and and you know you ben? We're gonna go on a big ghost tour in a couple more days. We're we're on vacation for the remainder of the year, so I'll keep you posted, and thanks for the podcast. Thank you for listening, and and I'll say that to all of our people I can't thank you enough. So little bighorn. I think that's come out in the public eye. So it's back there. I've been in it. It's it's there. So spoiler alert, that's done. There is a room back there. But anyway. They claim that you can see Rushmore from a statue dedicated to Sitting Bull, which is a really cool statue as well. You should see it. Battlefields in general are known to have a, shall we say, a disproportionately higher share of ghost stories or ghost occurrences than something like a an 1800s library or the little bighorn battlefield is definitely not an exception. So by definition, the Battle of the Little Bighorn was basically the cumulation of the attempt of the U.S. Army to halt the alleged attacks by the Lakota Sioux led by Sitting Bull, which they claimed they were encroaching on American settlers and miners. The battle ended, I believe, on June 26, 1876. The 7th Cavalry, who was under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer. So you've heard of that, Custer's last stand and all that stuff. So that regiment suffered 268 dead, with six more dying later from among the 55 wounded. The number of casualties of Native American warriors was never officially tabulated. The general consensus among the historians would place that number at about 100. Now, a great number of eyewitness accounts suggest that the ground is indeed haunted by its history. The heart of the Little Bighorn's supernatural encounters is the place you're talking about, the Stonehouse. That was built in 1894, and it was a residence for grounds superintendents, the guys that took care of the grounds. The Crow Indians referred to the first superintendents as ghost herders. They claim that they kept the spirits of the dead from traveling beyond the grounds where they perished. This may not have been an incorrect definition considering the Stonehouse has a reported surplus of, shall we say, peculiar happenings. Staff living on the premises have dealt with lights that are turned on by themselves, doors that inexplicitly will refuse to open, but then later abruptly offer access without a problem. They have shadow figures who appear without warning and vanish just as fast as they appeared. Many of the Stonehouse stories that were recorded hide the identities of the eyewitnesses. Now that's no great surprise in this business. Many people don't wish to permanently stigmatize themselves for bearing witness to ghosts. That's less so today than it was even 30 years ago. We've all gone over the statistics many times, who believes in ghosts, and how many people think they've had an interaction with one. But still, some people they don't want their name mentioned. They don't want to be that guy that said he saw a ghost. But perhaps one of the most fantastic of these stories was in the summer of 19, I believe it was 86, there was a newly appointed battlefield ranger that lived in the Stonehouse upstairs apartment. He said that in his bedroom there was a soldier missing a head in his legs. One person that did agree to be identified, if you will, in connection with the Stonehouse's ghost. And I hope I get this right, Christine Hope. And I believe that Christine was employed in 1983 and was in residence on the property when she was awakened at about 2 a.m. to find the figure, and you're going to want to pay attention to this, with a long handlebar mustache. Sounds like the guy in your email, right? Sitting at a table. Now she says that the man did not speak, but conveyed a very painful expression. Now Hope was the kind of person that just wouldn't put something like that down, so she would engage in heavy research into it until she found Lieutenant Benjamin H. Hodson who died in battle. She found a photograph of him, and she recognized him immediately as the phantom figure in her room. His ghost has been a presence at the Little Bighorn since the battle ended. The first recorded acknowledgement of Ben came in eighteen seventy seven when a seance reportedly made brief contact with Ben, who reportedly made brief contact with his friend, Lieutenant Clinton H. Tebitz, and they used their communication to praise his battalion's courage under fire. Over at the battlefield, ghost sightings have occurred for decades. Spirits of Native American warriors and Custer's troops coming into what we'll say is spectral view. Many people claim to have heard frightening screams of men that they claim were undergoing a grisly death. Now, according to hauntedhouses.com, some with psychic abilities even are able to witness some of the battle. Now, there have also been, I believe, two separate reports of men who visited the site and insisted they were transported back in time to the day of the battle. Now, you know, we've talked before on the podcast that the Native Americans believe in the portals that can take you forward and backward into the future and actually take you to other dimensions. We covered those in a podcast about the superstitions. So the notoriety, if you will, the Little Bighorn's Residence was cited by, and I hope I get this right, W. Hayden Blackman. He wrote a book in 1998 called The Field Guide to North American Hauntings. I have not read that, but I will before the year is over. And if you're a fan of those battlefields or of that time period, grab that book. I've been told by several people that it's very, very good. Excuse me. Blackman considered that Montana site to be the perfect training ground for ghost hunters. But he cautions that its ghosts could be surly and ill-tempered. Now it's claimed that the battlefield's most famous spirit would have to be Custer himself. And he's apparently not particularly interested in having a post-battle analysis, if you will, with the living. Lackman notes that Custer's ghost has been reportedly viewed wandering the halls of the Battlefields Museum. There he can be seen rowing the hallways at night. And he adds that Custer remains eerily silent as he continues to occupy the site of his last stand. Now also people claim that Custer's ghost was allegedly seen by the man he was pursuing when he arrived at the Little Bighorn. Lakota Sioux tradition claims that Sitting Bull visited the battlefield after the conflict ended, and the ghost of General Custer appeared to him at that time. This is an interesting thought. You know, if that story is accurate, that would have been the only time the two enemies met face to face, albeit it was in different spheres of existence. That's one to think about. Do you have a battlefield story? Did you go to Gettysburg or any of the other battlefield places? Did you see Custer's Last Stand? How about the Alamo? Places like that. I would love to hear those stories if you have them. And as always, you know you can send them snail mail, you can email them. If you send them snail mail. Could you please do the old doc a favor and print them? My printing is pretty good. My cursive is Terocious. I it's not atrocious, really, but it's um if if I'm in a hurry, it's not so great. I wrote something, uh, it's lecture notes that I was wanting someone to have. And this guy didn't know me. He's he doesn't know I even have a podcast, and it was a completely different kind of lecture. And he's in there and he's looking at the lecture notes, and he goes, He goes, Are you a doctor? I'm like, I am not a medical doctor. Why did you why do you ask? You can shift doctor's handwriting. Thank you. And he's like, it's not a compliment. Okay, got it. But send it your your stories, please, and remember these two things. There is indeed a world on the scene. It's a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. And hey, tell a paranormal story. It's good for you. We will talk tomorrow. Good night from the road in Arizona.
