Little Big Horn Battlefield, Montana
The story of Custer’s Last Stand has been told and retold in films and other media, some depictions highly fictionalized, others more or less accurate. How the actual battle transpired has been redefined since the late twentieth century, when a grass fire swept the area and the recovery of discarded weapons and other detritus of the battle, including cartridge casings, allowed the most accurate analysis of the battle completed up to this time. The legend of Last Stand Hill, where Custer and his few remaining troopers were overwhelmed by their enemies, emerged from the analysis largely intact.
None of the troopers under Custer’s direct command survived the fight. Five companies rode with him in his attack and ensuing attempt to make a fighting withdrawal, which led to the last stand as Northern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota warriors overwhelmed his troops. A Crow oral history claims that Custer may have been seriously wounded earlier in the battle, and his body was discovered after the battle with wounds in the arm, chest and temple, with either of the latter two likely serious enough to have been fatal. Several Indian accounts reported men of the Seventh cavalry committing suicide prior to the final assault by the warriors.
That Custer himself committed suicide has been proposed by some scholars given the nature of the head wound, which was to the left temple. It can never be known for certain whether he did or not. He was dead, his body not mutilated as were the majority of those of his command, chopped to pieces in most cases after the fight was over. The detachment of the Seventh Cavalry under Major Reno and Captain Benteen continued to hold out until relieved by troops under General Terry. Upon learning that Custer and his command had been wiped out a stunned Reno surveyed the battlefield, and wrote his opinion later that the fight had been a disorganized and terrifying rout.
Beginning in the late 1940s, reports of the Custer Battlefield being haunted began to surface. In August 1976, one hundred years after the battle, visitors reported strange and sudden drops of temperature while standing on what is now called Custer Hill, where his body was found following the battle. Visitors reported murmuring sounds, but actual words were impossible to make out. Employees and visitors have claimed to have seen mounted Indian warriors near the site, which vanished when approached. Buildings on the site erected by the Park Service for the use of Park Rangers have reported a strange locking and unlocking of doors, lights being turned on when the building is unoccupied, and other inexplicable phenomena.
An employee of the Visitor Center, which sits near Last Stand Hill, reported seeing an apparition walk through a locked storage room door. This happened following the employee giving a presentation on the battle in the Center’s basement. The number of alleged encounters with the supernatural has been increasing in recent years, with reports by visitors claiming to feel strange tugs of their limbs when nobody was around them, as if they were being pulled to the ground. Employees have also reported numerous instances of strange sounds, abrupt temperature drops, and spectral images.