Fairweather Inn Ghost Hunt & Sleepover, Virginia City, Montana

Ghost Hunt & Sleepover at The Fairweather Inn, Virginia City, Montana

An 1860s building on Wallace Street. A town the vigilantes built. And tonight, it’s yours.

The night settles heavy over Wallace Street. The gas lamps flicker, the boardwalks creak under no visible weight, and somewhere above you on the second floor of the Fairweather Inn, a pair of small footsteps runs the length of the hallway and stops dead outside your door. You hold your breath. The handle turns.

Virginia City is the real thing. Not a recreation, not a movie set, but a preserved 1860s gold rush boomtown, locked in time since the day Bill Fairweather struck the mother lode at Alder Gulch in May 1863. Within weeks, ten thousand prospectors had poured into the valley. Within months, the streets ran with gold dust, gunsmoke, and blood. And in the middle of it all, a building rose on Wallace Street that would pass through more hands, names, and purposes than almost any other structure in town.

The lot the Fairweather Inn sits on was one of the first preemptions in Virginia City, deeded in September 1863. The building that stands there now began life as a meat market, was converted to a hotel and saloon in the 1880s, and was renamed the Anaconda Hotel by Frank McKeen in 1896, a man so prepared for trouble he kept a casket in the basement. The Boveys bought it in 1946, remodelled it in the style of Bannack’s Goodrich House, and gave it the name it carries today.

A little further down Wallace Street stands the Hangman’s Building, where five of Henry Plummer’s road agents were hanged from a roof beam on the night of January 14th, 1864. The rope marks in the original beam are still there, and the building is now a Virginia City Preservation Alliance site.

This is the street. This is the era. And the Fairweather Inn, with its creaking hallways, its first-floor spirits and its second-floor footsteps, is widely reported to be one of the most haunted places in the entire state of Montana.

The History That Refuses to Die

To understand why this part of Virginia City is so saturated with spirit activity, you need to understand the violence that built it. Virginia City in the 1860s was the lawless beating heart of the Montana Territory. Sheriff Henry Plummer of nearby Bannack ran a gang of road agents who robbed and murdered more than a hundred men on the trails between the gold camps. When the citizens finally had enough, they formed the Montana Vigilantes, and in the space of six weeks, twenty-four men were hanged.

Five of them went to the rope together, in an unfinished building on Wallace Street, in full public view. Their bodies were cut down at dusk and dumped in unmarked graves on Boot Hill, the cemetery that overlooks the town, where strange lights are still reported drifting between the five headstones to this day.

Bill Fairweather himself, the man who started the whole gold rush, died penniless and alcoholic at a place called Robber’s Roost, with only a bottle for company. His name lives on above the door of a hotel he never owned and never slept in. Some say he’s looking for what he lost.

And then there are the children. No one knows quite who they were, or how they died, but every local historian, every ghost walk guide, and every long-serving member of the hotel staff will tell you the same thing: the Fairweather Inn belongs to its child spirits, and they are very, very active.

The Ghosts of the Fairweather Inn

The Children of the First Floor

The most frequently reported entities at the Fairweather Inn are the spirits of two or three young children who seem to treat the first-floor guest rooms as their playground. They are especially drawn to living children, and guests travelling as families have reported finding their toys moved in the night, hearing giggling from empty corners, and watching bedroom lights click on and off on their own. Luggage is lifted and shifted across rooms. Closet doors swing open when no one is near them. Voices, small and whispering, have been caught on digital recorders asking guests to play.

They are not malevolent. But they do not stop.

The Lady in the Hallway

Visitors on the second floor have described the unmistakable sound of a long, heavy skirt rustling past their doors in the early hours of the morning. The footsteps are deliberate, measured, and always stop outside a bedroom before fading away. Nothing is ever seen. But the sound of fabric brushing wooden floorboards at 3am has driven more than one paying guest to check out before sunrise.

Room 10, The Hotspot

Among paranormal investigators and staff alike, Room 10 is the most notorious space in the entire building. It is the room where guests have reported waking to loud thumps at the foot of the bed, where objects are moved overnight, where cold spots settle without explanation, and where one member of the Bozeman Paranormal Society was physically locked inside by an unseen force during an investigation.

The Bearded Soldier

Multiple witnesses have described the same figure walking the streets outside the hotel: a tall, bearded man in a tattered Civil War uniform, his expression furious, who crosses Wallace Street and vanishes the moment he reaches the boardwalk. Several sightings have been reported from the upper balcony of the Fairweather Inn itself.

Echoes of the Bowling Alley

One of the strangest reports from the Fairweather Inn is the sound of a phantom bowling alley. A bowling alley did once operate on or near the site, and the distinctive rumble of a heavy ball rolling down a wooden lane, followed by the clatter of pins, has been heard on quiet nights by guests and staff who have no idea what they are listening to.

Your Investigation, Room by Room

The Second Floor Landing and Hallway. Where the vigilantes are said to have held their meetings and where the rustling dress and phantom footsteps are most often heard. We will conduct structured EVP sessions here, listening for the voices of the conspirators.

The Hotspot Rooms. The most active guest rooms. Spirit box work, trigger object experiments, and lights-out vigils aimed at making contact with the entity that locked a paranormal investigator inside these four walls.

The First Floor Guest Rooms. The territory of the Fairweather children. We bring toys, balls, and motion-triggered equipment to encourage interaction. This is some of the most family-friendly and interactive spirit contact work we offer at any venue.

The Lobby and Period Parlor. The heart of the original Anaconda Hotel and Saloon, where miners, gamblers, gunmen, and vigilantes all passed through. Table tipping and group vigils will be held here under the soft glow of the oil lamps.

The Upper Balcony. A vantage point onto Wallace Street where the bearded Civil War apparition has been seen. A quiet, contemplative watch spot throughout the night.

Why This Event Is Unlike Any Other

Nowhere else can you investigate inside a building whose foundations were laid in the first months of the Alder Gulch gold rush, on the same street where the Montana Vigilantes executed five men in a single night, in a town that the New York Times once called the best-preserved frontier settlement in the American West. When you step onto Wallace Street at midnight, with the gas lamps lit and the mountains black against the sky, there is no modern world to distract you. No chain hotels. No fast food. No neon. Just the wind, the wooden buildings, and whatever is walking the floorboards above your head.

This is a sleepover event. After the investigation winds down, you do not drive home. You climb the stairs, you shut your door, and you try to sleep in the same hotel that has driven other paying guests out into the night.

Some of you will not close your eyes until dawn.

What’s Included

• Exclusive overnight access to The Fairweather Inn for ghost hunting
• Guided paranormal investigation led by our experienced Haunted Rooms America team
• Structured vigils in the most active areas of the building
• Use of professional paranormal investigation equipment including spirit boxes, K2 meters, REM pods, digital voice recorders, and motion-triggered trigger objects
• Group and lone vigil opportunities for the more experienced investigators among you
• Overnight sleepover accommodation inside the haunted hotel itself
• Light refreshments, tea, and coffee throughout the night
• Free time to investigate this historic building at your own pace
• Memories, evidence, and stories from one of the most genuinely unique paranormal venues in the entire United States
• Late 11am check-out the following morning, giving you time to rest and explore the historic streets of Virginia City before heading home

Virginia City is a long way from anywhere. The Fairweather Inn has been waiting 160 years. The children on the first floor are wide awake.

Are you?