It’s Halloween, the season of spooks, the eerie, and unexplained. When the Stillwater County News tasked me with finding out about rumors of things that go bump in the night at the New Atlas Bar, I didn’t really expect I’d find much. Boy, was I wrong.
The New Atlas Bar, originally the Headquarters Bar, was founded in 1880 and moved to the existing building in 1916 and is now over 100 years old. This historic bar sits on Pike Street in downtown Columbus and is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places by the Department of Interior, as the plaque inside the bar confirms. The native sandstone building, cut from local quarries make it a truly home-grown bar. By the way, the second story was a brothel according to local lore. And the basement housed a bowling alley. Both the brothel and the bowling alley no longer exist. It lies across the street from the railroad, making easy access for those days when Montanans regularly traveled by train. Two huge mahogany Brunswick bars date from those early days and came in by rail.
The original owner named it the “Atlas Bar,” but it became the New Atlas Bar because of Prohibition. Before Prohibition, our government did not require liquor licenses, but when prohibition went away, the government required the owner to register his bar. The owner went to Helena to get the license but it seems Montana had another Atlas Bar, so the Columbus bar became the New Atlas Bar. Sources indicate that the New Atlas Bar was the first bar in Montana to get a liquor license. As you walk into the bar, notice a “ladies’ sitting room” just inside the front door. It now has been converted to a mini-casino. This sitting room was ladies only, apparently used for ladies while their gents drank in the main bar. They could ring a bell to call for drinks for those of the fairer sex. Pretty nice way for a lady to get a drink and not sully her reputation in the old days.
Its sixty taxidermized animal heads, (deer, elk, buffalo, owls, skunks, moose, badger, mountain sheep, cougar, timber wolf, parrot, antelope, multiple birds and, of course, a two-headed calf) has earned it a nickname, the Dead Zoo Bar, which makes it worthy of a blog, but as I talked to the former and current owners, the story continues. Ghosts, unexplained footsteps, and a clock with a mind of its own are some of the stories that are told.
The New Atlas Bar has two bars facing each other, with mahogany framing each mirror, guarded by intricate metal lion heads. The bar itself is twenty-four feet long and twenty-three inches wide and it looks like one piece of wood. Large latching cabinets sit behind the bar. The long horns of a Longhorn Steer hang over the mirror, commemorating Montana’s early cattle herds, coming from Texas. Spittoons are built into the floor of the main bar.
The bar has seen lots of history, but there is more. A few of those old cowboy spirits decided to come back to visit, and as this intrepid reporter took her notebook and talked to the living, she learned some incredible tales of the supernatural. The bar is haunted!
Lars Swanson, purchased the bar in 1997 and owned it for 20 years. He tells several stories of spooky happenings, which will make your spine tingle. High above the bar hung a clock, a regular battery-operated clock with hands. Early one morning when Lars was cleaning the bar, the clock’s hands started spinning, round and round, for several minutes, finally landing on the exact minute, just one hour earlier. It happened more than once and the bartender was so stunned that he took the clock down and threw it away.
Another time, Lars saw a man in a Fedora, you know, a Sam Spade or Columbo type of hat, peeking out from behind a wall. Only nobody was there. Lars thought the man looked like the bar’s original owner, Tom Mulvehill, but never saw him again. After that, he often felt the presence of someone near him, but no one was there. Most of the encounters were harmless, but a one-time encounter creeped Lars out, when one of the booths seemed unnaturally dark, and Lars felt an absence of good, even evil, lurking in the bar.
This feeling of a presence was repeated by the Gena Pluid, current owner, and bartenders Chelsea and Jodi. Gena explained, “It’s just weird, it feels like someone is standing next to you, but no one is there. You look around and you are alone.” On a regular basis, people hear footsteps in the bar, before it is open or after hours. They always take a look around, but no one appears. Latched cabinet doors open and the bar staff shuts them and they open again. Spooky, huh?
Long-time employee Darlene Hegg also had an encounter. She was mopping the closed and empty bar and left the mop and bucket leaning against the bar near the front door while she stepped outside for a few minutes, never leaving the front walkway. When she returned to her duties, the bucket had been moved, from where she had left it to the other side of the room and the mop was lying on the floor. Again, no one was there.
Gena, Jody, and Chelsea all reported glasses falling from the bar top and shelves, and Lars told of a George Foreman grill flying across the room, landing 20 feet away from its original position. They all agreed that none of the events/encounters are mean, rather they are more like a jokester. They have heard voices, “Hellllooooo.”
Okay, so now the ghosts…Gena reported that a customer saw a woman in a red and white dress who asked him to play a Garth Brooks tune on the jukebox, but except for Gena, no woman was in the bar. “It’s a cowboy type bar and I would have noted a woman in a dress, that’s for sure,” Gena said. Others have seen a cowboy wearing an orange plaid or checked shirt. He has been seen at various times and places in the bar.
Lars said there were even some paranormal investigators (ghost busters), who came to Columbus to measure the presence of supernatural essence and, although the measurements were not conclusive, Lars reported they did detect some unusual “vibes.”
As I contemplated these stories tonight, wine in hand, a swirling wisp of air touched my cheek, and shook my unsteady hand as I set down my glass, missing the table and crashing to the floor. Was it the ghost of the Atlas Bar? I don’t know, but I’m not ruling it out! Happy Halloween!
