Historic hotel boasts haunted history

The Belton Chalet looks into the grandiose mountains of Glacier National Park from its hillside perch in West Glacier. The historic lodge, built in 1910 by the president of the Great Northern Railway, is a popular stopping point for tourists, known for its gourmet restaurant, classic accommodations and a number of special guests. It could be said a few guests overstayed their welcome — or simply never checked out.

The ghosts of the Belton Chalet have long made their presence known to staff and guests of the iconic lodge. The spooky sprites are said to frequent Room 37, let out the occasional scream down the hall and misplace reading glasses and other personal effects for their own entertainment. While former staff say there’s no denying the chalet’s haunted history, they are quick to note that the resident spirits are friendly tricksters — not deviants — at heart. They’re blamed for rocking chairs moving by themselves, the sound of footsteps outside a door and the sounds of bouncing balls in the middle of the night. So well-known are the Belton ghosts that their lore filled an entire chapter in Karen Stevens’ 2013 book detailing paranormal activity in the park, “Glacier Ghost Stories.”

Former front desk worker and assistant lodge manager Michelle McDowell said she had multiple experiences with the chalet’s eternal residents over her seven-year tenure.

Her most memorable encounter took place during the last year of her employment in the spring of 2017. She was manning the front desk one evening and all the guests had gone down to dinner. She decided to take the opportunity to update the information books in each room with the latest restaurant menus and set about retrieving the volumes. As she made her way in and out of the main lodge rooms, she clearly recalls using a key, since chamber doors didn’t lock automatically. When the new pages were in place, McDowell made her way back upstairs to redistribute them. But when she got to Room 37, she found the door was locked.

“There was no way for the door to lock without the key — it’s not like it can just slam shut. I looked up and down the hall and I said, ‘Hey Bob, it’s just me,’” McDowell said. “Honestly, I laughed out loud to myself. I’ll be darned, he finally got me.”

Bob is perhaps the most well-known apparition at the lodge and is known for pranking guests by stealing their keys or turning on faucets, and has been described by his witnesses as a man wearing a tall hat and coattails.

Former manager Noreen Hanson suspects Bob had once traveled to the area by rail — a theory bolstered by reports of Bob lurking around the train depot in West Glacier, a mere 3-minute walk from the chalet.

“We called him Belton Bob because he needed to have a name,” Hanson said. “We refer to him as a very mischievous ghost. The rooms would be totally empty … nobody even checked into them, and the water would come on in either the sink or the shower. There were times like that I would get a chill because I was like, ‘I know you’re here.’”

Hanson said she’s convinced that Bob, or one of the hotel spirits, got hold of her reading glasses once, and on a separate occasion, heard what she described as “a horrendous, blood-curdling scream” emanate from the first floor hallway.

The paranormal presence that stands out most in her memory isn’t Bob, but a little girl. A hotel guest was showering when he reportedly turned to see a little girl in there with him. He ran down to the main desk with his wife and belongings, hair still wet, and gave Hanson the key before departing.

“I went in there and I didn’t see anything,” Hanson said, of the man’s room.

Another guest, Ryan Belcher, who stayed at the hotel over a year ago, recounted his haunted experience in a Google review of the property.

“My girlfriend and I were unable to sleep both nights as we kept hearing footsteps outside our door ... plus we heard a ‘presence’ in the room a couple times (sound of an old man moaning),” according to the review.

While some guests were less than thrilled with their unexpected visitors, others purposely sought out the Belton in hopes of an other-worldly experience.

“Not a large percentage, but there was a percentage of people looking for that thrill that actually seek out haunted historic hotels,” Hanson said.

At least one known attempt has been made to usher out the ghostly inhabitants, Hanson said. When the chalet was under renovations in the late ’90s, she heard reports of staff hearing marbles rolling down the stairs and a little girl’s laughter. The then-owners allegedly hired a member of the Blackfeet tribe to cleanse the lodge of its ghosts, she said.

But Bob, or whoever he really is, doesn’t seem to have any plans to leave.

He and the other spirits have a place in the hotel’s history — and perhaps its present day.

“I never believed in that stuff before,” Hanson said, “but there’s somebody still living at the Belton.”

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss can be reached at mreiss@dailyinterlake.com or (406) 758-4433.