The Great Falls-based Montana Association of Paranormal Studies placed cameras and audio and video recorders in the ancient Cascade County Jail to try to spot ghosts earlier this year.
"They asked to come into the jail and set up cameras," said Commissioner Lance Olson Sunday.
During a pair of visits in January and February, the group brought some of its equipment into the 1909 jail, and then brought in a more extensive video surveillance system, recalled Brad Clark, the county's building maintenance supervisor.
After the first visit, Clark said, "they indicated they thought they heard something."
There's no word yet if, or how many, ghosts or strange occurrences were found in the building's dingy interior.
"We're getting a report from them," Olson said. "I'm not going to speculate about what or who they found in there."
Even so, the building contains "a lot of history," Olson said. If the group was going to find evidence of the supernatural, "they'd find it in that jail," Olson added with a chuckle.
Olson said he didn't think the group had any special reason to probe the jail but was "just investigating all the possibilities."
The jail definitely is a spooky place. It still retains trap doors that were available in the early days for hangings, although the steel doors were welded shut over the years.
The jail isn't the only place the group has checked out.
"We're ghost hunters basically," said Michelle Heberle, co-founder of the group, which also looked at a couple of residences and the Lobby Bar.
"That place was really haunted," Heberle said of the bar.
A striking match to the Cascade County Courthouse, the sandstone jail will celebrate its 100th birthday next year. The jail was vacated in 1998 as prisoners moved to the new county jail near the airport.
The old jail, across 4th Street North from the courthouse, sits little used because of the high costs of renovating it into office space.
Quick meeting
Let's be brief.
That was city government's approach to last Tuesday's regular City Commission meeting.
The city is playing a bit of a waiting game until new City Manager Gregory Doyon shows up March 24. His predecessor, John Lawton, retired effective March 1.
City government continues under Asssistant City Manager Cheryl Patton, but the city had a light agenda last week and wrapped up the meeting in 18 minutes. That's still short of former Mayor Gayle Morris' record of seven minutes set Dec. 17, 1993. That mark will be difficult to shatter.
What was even more startling last Tuesday was absolutely no one spoke during the commission's meeting-ending public comment period for the first time in recent memory. When no one rose to approach the podium, Commissioner Bill Beecher speedily moved to adjourn, and that was that.
It's not that there weren't people who wanted to speak. They just showed up late, after the meeting was over.
That just goes to show that people who want to get up on their soap boxes should have to suffer through the whole meeting like the rest of us.
Quick exit
One potential juror at a Municipal Court trial late last week had a legitimate reason not to serve on the jury. He was connected to a portable oxygen supply.
Ray Gervais of Great Falls told Judge Nancy Luth his supply of oxygen probably would run out by 4 p.m.
So Luth dismissed him, theorizing the trial could be a long one. And she was right. The disorderly conduct and assault trial lasted past 4 p.m. for two days in a row.
"That's one way to get out of it," quipped Gervais as he left the courtroom Thursday, to chuckles from the remaining jury pool members.
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/p ... 00309/1002
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