Step Inside The Creepy, Abandoned Town Of Sims In North Dakota
The town of Sims, North Dakota has been abandoned for quite some time, which means there have been no official recorded residents for absolute years. Of course, no one living, that is. According to this article in the Bismarck Tribune, there may still be someone – or something – lingering there, who has possibly been there since 1918. The town itself sits abandoned nowadays, one of the creepiest abandoned places in North Dakota, that numbered 1,200 residents at its peak.
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Here you can garner a broad understanding of what is actually left of Sims, North Dakota. It's not much.
The town was founded in 1883 in Morton County. It began as a coal town and blossomed into a large city with over 1,000 residents. But only a few decades later, that number had plummeted to a mere 86. By 1947 the post office had closed and the last remaining residents dwindled down to nothing in the following years.
The last remaining structures are a beautiful Scandinavian Lutheran Church, which is still in use for people outside of the town, and its parsonage.
As one of the best known ghost towns in North Dakota, you're bound to meet folks that know old stories about the town. It's a lonely place with a history that pre-dates North Dakota's statehood.
Beyond the empty, eerie feeling you may get in this town, there is something in the parsonage that could make anyone decide to hightail it out of there.
The parsonage is well known to be home to a spirit who refuses to leave. That spirit is known as The Gray Lady, and she has been haunting Sims for a century. She originally lived as the minister's wife in the early 1900s. By 1915, she had died from illnesses within the parsonage. In 1930, a preacher at the church left the parsonage because of the hauntings he was experiencing - and he wasn't the only one. The townspeople went as far as contacting a local bishop asking for him to come to their church and see if he could do something about this spirit. People reported seeing her wandering the church and even playing the organ at random. The second floor of the parsonage - where she lived - had windows that would open and close on their own. One man said he even spoke to her, and no one in the town doubted him.
Today, the entire town is abandoned, but signs of the ghost remain.
Not many people come in or out of the Sims anymore, and not many want to. With the Gray Lady still haunting the place, you may want to steer clear...who knows who (or what?!) you'll run into in this North Dakota ghost town.
Have you ever heard of the Gray Lady in the creepiest abandoned town in North Dakota or had a similar experience somewhere else? Maybe you’ve heard of these 7 urban legends in North Dakota. I don’t recommend reading them before you go to bed, you might just have to leave your lights on!
What other abandoned places are there in North Dakota?
Shockingly enough, there are quite a few abandoned and perhaps even haunted places in the state of North Dakota. The Sims Church and Parsonage, of course, as well as the San Haven Sanatorium, the State Hospital for the Insane in Jamestown and the towns of Alkabo and Ambrose.
Are there any hiking trails to abandoned places in North Dakota?
There aren’t really any options for hiking to abandoned places in North Dakota, unfortunately. On the bright side? Most places are accessible by car!
What ghost towns can you find in North Dakota?
North Dakota is the home to quite a few ghost towns. It’s as if the state took a bit of pride in abandoning some of the lesser-known places to the supernatural, leaving towns like Arena, Carbury and Wheelock to crumble into the ether. If you haven’t been, we’d recommend driving trips to Omemee and Temple, when the weather is good. They make for eerie sights and fascinating ghost towns in North Dakota.
Leah moved to North Dakota when she was 12 years old and has traveled from the Red River Valley to the badlands and many places in between. She loves small-town life and currently enjoys living on a small farm in the ND prairie. She's always had a passion for writing and has participated in novel writing challenges such as NaNoWriMo multiple times. Her favorite part about this job is recognizing small businesses that deserve a boost and seeing the positive affect her articles can have on their traffic, especially in rural areas that might have otherwise gone overlooked.
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