When travelers are exploring rural Wyoming, on the road between Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park, they often stop at the TA Ranch in Buffalo, Wyoming, a Smithsonian Institute National Historic Landmark known for its horseback riding, connections to notable cowboys, and grand historic rooms.
What they often don’t anticipate, however, is what makes the TA Ranch so special.
“I think what people fall in love with here is the family feel,” says Kirsten Madsen Giles, one of the ranch’s co-owners. Three generations of the Madsen family have close ties to the ranch — and Giles says that they share those ties with some other entities that live on the property.
“Most people aren’t even aware that we have ghosts. We don’t want our guests to get super scared,” says Giles. “And I don’t want people ghost-hunting on my property. I don’t want my ghosts disturbed.”
When Giles’s parents purchased the property in 1991, it had fallen into disrepair, but they were determined to preserve the ranch due to its historic significance. The TA Ranch was the site of an 1892 siege during the Johnson County Cattle War — a dispute between cattle companies and alleged cattle rustlers — at the height of western expansion.
“The Johnson County Cattle War concluded in our barn,” Giles explains. “The cattle barons had hired an assassination force, and they were coming north to assassinate 70 men on a list. The citizens of Buffalo started riding south, and they took cover in the barn.”
It was in that same barn, more than a century later, that Giles, her husband, and their son, had their first encounter with what seemed to indisputably be ghosts.
“I can’t emphasize enough how skeptical we were before we got here,” she says.
But after decades of running the ranch and hotel, the family is convinced that mischievous cowboys still reside on their property. Sometimes they seem to tease her family or the hotel’s staff: They’ll cause loud noises or knock things off shelves. Giles says that in some instances the spirits will also make themselves known to the guests.
While the Madsens don’t advertise their ranch as a haunted hotel, they view the ghosts as an indispensable part of their property’s history and as members of their own family.
“One thing that we’ve realized is that ghosts are people too,” says Giles. “It’s very clear that we’re working with people who have a hilarious sense of humor. Had we known them in life, we would have gotten along very well.”
Continue reading to learn more about luxurious hotels that are said to be haunted by supernatural entities.
