deserted places and empty spaces tour 2013 pt 2

so i finally make it out the clusterfuck that is yellowstone and hit hwy 191 north to bozeman, intending to scrap locating good camping and trying to resupply in the limited amount of daylight left. i fell in behind some worktrucks filled with locals doing 90+ on the hwy and jammed her in. as im nearing the town of belgrade (a "suburb" of bozeman) i see a sign for garnet which rings a bell in the ghost town directory, did a hhhmmmm, but needed to look after a bed-down situation before it got too late, so kept on heading. but a few miles before i-90 i see a koa right next to a hot springs complex. screeeeee i pull a u-turn and completely toss the idea of a hotel and checking out bozeman out the window. i proceed to secure a site and set up and i notice two tattoo covered metal heads in a site across the way, hacking away at a log beside their sickly looking fire with a machete and a hack saw; so i grabbed my hatchet and bottle of jack and proceeded to introduce myself and offer them the use of both. they were somewhat-construction workers from minneapolis, meaning they travel around the whole west installing only the alarm panels in new and refurbished holiday inns. we proceed to talk minneapolis' music scene, past and present for a while and then i mentioned a plan to hit garnet ghosttown(which turned out wasnt, so i didnt go) when the older ones face fell and he said you wont find anything like the ghosttown story im about to tell. so he proceeds to tell this story about them traveling and dicking off on the road n between holiday inns and they stopped at a really old boarded up pink adobe mission church on the side of highway 2 for a break and a look around. they were checking out the graveyard when they noticed most were young dead and with indian names. not wanting to stir up an indian burial ground they proceeded to walk around the church and found the back had been pried open so they went inside for a look see. inside the chapel they found a cryptic message spraypainted on the walls, and i wish i had paid more attention to what he said, but it was something like those without eyes cannot see... blah blah, i wasn't really paying attention at this point; but he said that as soon as he got done reading the last of the sentence there was 2 loud crashing booms in the room next door which completely freaked them out and they hightailed it out of there. back outside they took a better closeup photo of the front of the church and drove off to their next campground. during the night the older one had a dream, the coolest dream he had ever had he said, where he was astral projecting over his body and he was watching himself when he turned around and saw a figure reaching down pulling his spirit out of his body, so he fought it off and said no you wont mother$#%$^ real loud and then woke up. later that day as theyre driving down into bozeman, the younger one was going through the pictures he had taken when he noticed something weird in the photo and zoomed in, what he found completely rattled him and they pulled over. now i saw this picture and most of you who know me know i dont go in for any kind of spiritual fairy tale bs like ghosts, spirits or religion but this picture had me in gooseflesh all night afterwards. clearly visible is a face... eyes, nose and neckline with two extended arms coming out of the halfmoon window above the boarded up front door, a white face almost like it was painted with war paint with a black stripe running down the middle of the face. so it gets even freakier when they say they had done some research on the place and found an account about somebody who had gone through a similar experience who had heard 2 bumps against the side of their car as they drove off; well these 2 had heard one bump as they drove off. at this point the guy is motioning me to the side of their suv and points down to a mud streak across their truck and there in the mud was a childs handprint, i kid you not. at this point im completely freaking out, they put a chill into me bigtime with their tale, and they were completely rattled and very happy i had shown up with the whiskey.weirdly enough their tale and picture was creepy enough and authentic looking enough that i might start believing in ghosts. i did some research and there was massacre of the Gros Ventres and Assiniboine indian women and children there one year while the braves were off hunting as well as a small pox epidemic which killed off a lot of children, i dont know which incident caused the bad juju but some of it had definitely rubbed off on these 2; i was almost reluctant to shake their hands the next morn as we all made ready to leave, i didnt want any to rub off on me hahaha, so much so that because i did wind up shaking with them when i got my lil brothers house i used a sage smudge stick to wash smoke over my body just in case. very strange night


photo of church is not the one they took, this is only one i found of it on the net