The Spirit of Miss Kate Arnold: The Woman Who Never Left the Sheridan Inn
- Michael Dykhorst
- Oct 29
- 15 min read
With Halloween just two days away, it feels like the right time to talk about a ghost.... a gentle one. Not the rattling-chains, cold-attic kind, but the kind who lingers out of love.
Sheridan has its share of legends, but if you ask locals who know the old stories, they’ll tell you the most famous ghost in town is a woman who never truly left her home: Miss Kate Arnold of the Sheridan Inn.
I wrote this story in two parts:
The first is Miss Kate’s life story.
The second is the ghost story of the woman who still keeps watch.
Late in the evenings on Broadway Street, the lamps of the Sheridan Inn cast a soft amber glow across the wooden porch. Inside, the building creaks with age and memory. A chair shifts, a floorboard sighs, and a faint fragrance of violets and roses—Miss Kate’s favorite flowers—slips down the stairwell.
Guests glance up, certain someone just passed through the lobby, someone who still keeps watch.
“She loved the building. She is watching over it,” said Sheridan Heritage Center guide Carla Hager in The Sheridan Press (2011).
Even now, staff and visitors claim that the Inn’s lifelong caretaker has never abandoned her post. They say she still moves through the halls in the quiet hours, ensuring the beds are turned down neat, the carpets remain clean, and the lights are off when not needed—just as she did in life.
Some call it a haunting. Others call it devotion. At the Sheridan Inn, the past has not gone anywhere at all.
Virginia to the Western Frontier:
Before she became the spirit of a Western landmark, Catherine Brockenbrough Arnold was a daughter of Virginia’s Tidewater gentility.
Born May 29, 1879, at "Willow Hill" in King George County, Virginia, she grew up among magnolias and family heirlooms that told of centuries past. Her father, Dr. Thomas Thornton Arnold, M.D., a University of Pennsylvania–trained physician and veteran of the 5th Virginia Cavalry, tended both battlefield wounds and country fevers.
Her mother, Mary Randolph Brockenbrough Arnold, came from one of the county’s oldest families. Many of her ancestors fighting alongside then General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.
Their children were raised in a home where the Bible sat beside medical ledgers and Shakespeare
Children of Dr. Thomas Thornton and Mary Randolph Brockenbrough Arnold:
Minnie Branche Arnold 1893 -1896
EACH NAME IS CLICKABLE AND IS LINKED TO THEIR RESPECTIVE FINDAGRAVES
Mary Randolph Brockenbrough Arnold passed away 9 days after the birth of her youngest daughter Minnie and by 1895 Thomas Thornton Arnold had remarried. He married Ella Temple Coghill, Ella was Miss Kate's stepmother.
By her teens, Catherine was already frail from asthma and her treatments were limited and included inhaling smoke from burning plants like stramonium, using "asthma cigarettes" or powders, or avoiding environmental triggers like dust or pollen. With the heavy Virginia humidity stealing her breath. Doctors prescribed dry air and altitude, “somewhere far west of the Mississippi.”
In 1901, at twenty-two, she packed a small trunk and boarded a Burlington Route train bound for Birney, Montana. Her two brothers, Randolph and Jack were already in Birney taking care of the Quarter Circle U Ranch. Her step mothers sister Emma Coghill Hogan was teaching on the Cheyenne Indian Reservation. She spent the summer in Montana.
Her siblings would scatter across growing America. But Catherine’s path would lead her farther still, beyond the familiar hush of magnolias and the slow tide of the Rappahannock River, west to Sheridan, Wyoming, where a legend was waiting to be written. coming to the west Miss Kate found herself in a different world wagon wheels, cowboys, and the crisp scent of pine replacing Virginia’s damp lilacs.
What began as a health retreat became a 60-plus-year devotion.
Catherine first came to Sheridan intending only to visit. She stayed for the rest of her life.
In her 1966 interview with “Man About Town” Bob Wilson, she recalled:
“I had been a dressmaker… I always went to the Inn for my dinner. Finally the Inn offered me the job of housekeeper. In those days the linen came in bolts, the sheets had to be made, the pillow slips, tablecloths, and napkins had to be hemmed. That kept me pretty busy. I kept that up for years and finally they made me housekeeper. I kept at that past seventy, and then I retired.”
The Sheridan Inn was already famous. Buffalo Bill Cody had already given up his part ownership. it had been called “the finest hotel between Chicago and San Francisco.” Its porches wrapped around the entire building, the ballroom glowed with oil lamps, and a young town gathered beneath its eaves to greet travelers and dreamers alike.
CLICK THE YOUTUBE LINK BELOW TO
LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BOB WILSON AND MISS KATE ARNOLD - PLEASE NOTE, THIS INTERVIEW WAS DONE IN 1966 AND MISS KATE DOES USE A WORD/TERM THAT IS CONSIDERED HIGHLY RACIST AND OFFENSIVE IN TODAY'S CULTURE. AS SUCH IT HAS AN 18+ RESTRICTION ON THE VIDEO.
Locals soon recognized her as the Inn’s conscience. She expected civility, polished brass until it mirrored the morning light, and placed bowls of violets and roses on the desk each spring.
“She was a lady in every sense of the word,” recalled Harriet Reno Putnam. “Many times you would see her on her knees, scrubbing carpets on the stairs or hallways. She protected the Inn like her home—because it was her home.”
By the 1910s the Sheridan Inn had become the social hub of northern Wyoming. Traveling actors lodged there, ranchers met bankers in the parlor, and brides posed on the great staircase. At the center of it all stood Miss Kate, tiny, straight-backed, and unfailingly calm. She was hostess, accountant, counselor, and custodian all at once.
“She loved the place, she gave her life, her energy, and her wherewithal to the Inn,” wrote Harriet Putnam Reno.
Each dawn she arranged bouquets of roses or lilies-of-the-valley from her garden. Her evenings ended by candlelight, balancing the accounts while the rest of Sheridan slept. The people of the town measured time by her rhythm: when Miss Kate opened the doors, it was morning; when she dimmed the lobby lamps, the day was done.
The 1920s brought prosperity; the 1930s nearly broke it. When the Depression emptied the guest register, Miss Kate refused to let the Inn go dark. She dipped into her own savings to pay overdue invoices and loaned money to the owners, without ever charging interest.
“She gave of her time, efforts, strength, and money to keep the old Inn going during the lean times of the 1920s and ’30s,” Reno recalled.
On winter nights she personally stoked the furnaces and scrubbed linens when help could no longer be hired. In spring she replanted the flower beds that framed the porch steps. To travelers, she was the calm voice behind the desk; to Sheridan’s poor, she was an unheralded benefactor. More than one child received a hand-knitted sweater with no note attached.
The Inn hosted a parade of famous names: Buffalo Bill Cody, Will Rogers, Yvonne De Carlo, Ernest Hemingway, President Hoover, Richard Nixon (when he was a senator) and local Senator John B. Kendrick. Yet Miss Kate treated cattle hands and dignitaries alike—with courtesy and quiet command.
“She had that look of belonging,” longtime porter Chester Howard, said later. “You could no more imagine the Inn without her than the mountains without snow.”
After the Inn closed, Harriet Putnam Reno began writing down her memories of the Inn.
One letter to the Della Herbst for the Inn's 100th in 1993 reads:
“The Inn is 100 years old! I do wish there was some way I could convince people that Miss Kate’s room was never on the 3rd floor, but on the second floor. Miss Kate's room was just around the corner from the ladies bathrooms. I do know what am talking about as Miss Kate was a very good friend of mine & I visited with her many times in her room on 2nd floor. Ben Stevenson was a Nephew of Dietz's & worked at desk for a number of years. He told me he was surprised to find "Miss Kate's" room on 3rd floor & I told guide who was showing me around the true story. I was last guest to check out of Inn on 4/28/65 - have a picture Mrs. Tyrrell took of me checking out." (Correction - Miss Harriet Putnam Reno was the last out of town guest to check out. There were a few Sheridan residents still there)
Reno’s correspondence, preserved in the Sheridan Heritage Center archives, The Wyoming Room at the Sheridan Fulmer Public Library and also in the files of Michael Dykhorst, offer the most intimate portrait of the woman behind the legend, gentle, meticulous, and quietly stubborn.
In 1965 the aging property sold. As most Sheridanites know it was almost torn down, but thanks to the Sheridan Historical Society and the people of Sheridan it was saved to stand and is still standing 60 years later.
When the Inn’s doors finally closed, Miss Kate’s health failed almost immediately.
“It was a death blow,” Reno wrote.
Miss Kate, lingered three more years, surrounded by a circle of friends that included Grace Tyrrell and many other Sheridan women.
Uno
In October 1964, Miss Kate traveled back home to Virginia for the last time. While there she saw many relatives. To ensure it remained within the family, she returned the 18th-century heirloom desk that she had taken with her 53 years ago when she moved out west.
This desk, a stunning example of craftsmanship, has been handed down through generations, with its rich wood polished to narrate tales of the past. It's one of those items about which you might say, "If this (Item) could talk the stories it could tell".
On March 1, 1968, Catherine Brockenbrough Arnold passed away at age 88 at Eventide. Though her address was 717 North Gould.... Just a mere block from her beloved Inn. Her will contained a simple directive:
“I direct my body be cremated.”
Her ashes, enclosed in a small metal urn, were placed inside the north wall of the third floor, the place she had called home. The story goes that she made the arrangements with Neltje to have her ashes placed there in the walls of the Inn. I have never seen it actually written down anywhere. It was apparently a verbal agreement.
Miss Kate's Will, Death Certificate, Obituary, and Funeral home Record from Ferris Funeral Home.
In 2008, when I began working at 1893 Grille & Spirits, I became friends with Della Herbst and Norma Nichols, who were then leading the Sheridan Heritage Center. They quickly learned how much I loved local history and began sharing stories, photos, and old files about the Sheridan Inn—sparking what would eventually become my personal collection on the Inn’s history.
One afternoon, while talking with Della, she told me something few people may know. During the renovations to reopen the Inn, Miss Kate’s ashes had to be temporarily removed from the wall where they had rested for decades. Before they were returned and before his death, Reverend Ray Clark, the same minister who officiated Miss Kate’s original funeral, performed a special blessing over her ashes.
Della and others ensured that Miss Kate’s ashes were carefully reinterred in the north wall of the third-floor room now named in her honor, Room 306.
I want to give special thanks to Ann Arnold Hennings for the correspondence and photos and information. Unfortunately Ann passed away in 2020 at age 83. She was the last burial in the Arnold Family Cemetery in King George, Virginia.
AND NOW THE "GHOST" STORY....................
The first reports came within months of her interment. Staff heard faint footsteps in the upper corridors, doors clicking open, and the soft scent of violets floating down the staircase. Sometimes a key turned in the office door, though no one is there.
In 2011, The Sheridan Press interviewed Sheridan Heritage Center guide Carla Hager and Historic Inn chairman Jake Brooks:
Hager: “When the lady died, the container of her ashes was taken up to the third floor and plastered into that north wall… She loved the building, and she’s still here.”
Brooks: “..... When things aren’t going as well as they should be that we have more Ghost reports, almost like she's not happy with what's happening.
Dogs barked at unseen figures; lights turned themselves on; a worker once switched off his flashlight only for it to blink back on as if in gentle reproof. A faint perfume lingered long after anyone living had left the floor.
In the above article, Jake Brooks tells a story about the Art Exhibit and the inn opener; this same story was told to me by Linda Fauth. Indeed Miss Kate was a proper lady!
Is Miss Kate Haunting or Protecting?
To the current stewards of the Inn, Miss Kate is no poltergeist but a guardian. “She cared deeply for the Inn for over five decades, and to this day she still oversees it lovingly,” a director told Cowboys & Indians magazine for their October 2024 issue feature of "Women who haunt the west".
That distinction—haunting versus watching over—divides opinion but not affection. As Harriet Reno Putnam once said, “She gave her life, her energy, and her wherewithal to the Inn. She loved the place.” If devotion can outlast death, perhaps her lingering presence is not a haunting at all, but love refusing to fade.
Even now, guests who linger on the second floor late at night sometimes hear a quiet clicking, metal on metal, like keys swaying on a ring. Others swear they see a shape pass the old windows or a single lamp glow to life at dawn.
Maybe it’s settling wood. Maybe it’s habit. Or maybe it’s the woman who once unlocked those doors every morning for sixty-four years, still beginning her day.
“She’s not scaring anyone away,” Carla Hager told The Sheridan Press. “She’s keeping watch.”
To those who knew her in life, that sounds exactly right. Miss Kate was never one for rest. Even after the Inn was restored—porches repaired, brass polished, voices once again echoing in the halls—visitors said the air itself seemed gentler, as though the house approved.
I’ve had my own experiences with Miss Kate at the Inn—and I’m not the only one. Others, like Edre Maier and Linda Fauth, who managed the Inn for several years, have stories of their own. When I returned to work there between 2023 and 2024, upper management told me that “Miss Kate isn’t a ghost—she’s the spirit who watches over the Inn.”
Personally, I don’t see much difference between the two. To me, a spirit and a ghost are one and the same. A ghost doesn’t have to frighten anyone to haunt a place—it can simply linger, protecting the space it loved most.
Miss Kate Arnold’s story bridges two worlds: the genteel South of her birth and the raw promise of the West she adopted. In her, the virtues of both met, refinement, perseverance, and quiet courage. Her Virginia lineage traced back to colonial planters and physicians. Her Western life was built on coal dust, train smoke, and the long Wyoming wind. She embodied the transformation of America itself, how an old nation’s grace took root in new soil. “She protected the Inn like her home, because it was her home,” Harriet Reno wrote.
Today the Sheridan Inn stands again in strength. Its rooms bear names of Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley and others known in the Wild West, and even a room for Miss Kate Arnold whose devotion outlasted her body. Some bring flowers. Others leave notes thanking her for keeping them company in the night.
While no known photographs exist of Miss Kate’s original second-floor room, the space now associated with her, the third-floor room, Room 306, has undergone several remodels over the past 30-40 years; it now survives as a double queen room.
It is here, within the wall of this very room, that Miss Kate’s ashes were placed, ensuring that she would forever remain within the Inn she loved.
Below are several photographs showing how Room 306 has appeared since the 1980s, reflecting its gradual transformation through restoration and preservation. CLICK TO EXPAND PHOTO
PHOTOS FROM MICHAEL DYKHORST, HELEN LAUMANN AND ANITA NICHOLS
Across the American West, historic hotels boast resident ghosts, the Stanley in Estes Park, the Monte Vista in Flagstaff, the Crescent in Eureka Springs. Most trade on fright. The Sheridan Inn’s story is different. Its ghost is a lesson in love.
To speak of Miss Kate’s haunting is not to sensationalize her; it is to honor constancy in a world built on impermanence. Buildings rise and fall, owners change, fortunes shift, but some spirits refuse to let beauty die.
That devotion still defines Sheridan. Each time the community rallies to preserve a landmark, to restore an old mural, or to tell its stories anew, a little of Miss Kate’s will is at work.
The Sheridan Inn stands because people cared enough to fight for it, none more faithfully than Miss Kate Arnold. To walk its halls is to step into her lifetime of service.
Over the years, the Sheridan Inn has drawn its share of ghost hunters, paranormal investigators, and curious visitors—each hoping to glimpse or feel Miss Kate’s presence. Some arrived with cameras and spirit boxes; others came quietly, carrying only respect and fascination. A few claimed to hear faint footsteps, smell her favorite violets, or see a shadow slip through the hall when no one else was there.
But the current management of the Sheridan Inn prefers a gentler interpretation. They describe Miss Kate not as a ghost, but as a spirit who lovingly watches over the Inn she called home. They believe the word haunted can make some guests uneasy—and after all, the Inn’s story is one of grace, care, and devotion, not fear.
Still, those who know her story understand that Miss Kate never frightened anyone in life, and she isn’t about to start now. Whether she’s a spirit, an energy, or Sheridan’s own “Casper the friendly Ghost” her presence is unmistakably felt.
So I say.... Support the Inn. Visit her room. Leave a violet or a rose on the desk. Tell her story. Because history lives only when it’s spoken aloud, and love endures only when it’s shared.
And when you pause in the parlor and catch that faint trace of flowers or purfume drifting by, smile, and whisper, “Thank you.”
Some spirits don’t haunt out of fear.
They stay out of love.
Some other photos of Miss Kate
Sources
Miss Kate Remembers (1969), Sheridan County Historical Society.
Correspondence of Harriet Reno Putnam, Sheridan Heritage Center Archives, The Wyoming room, and Michael Dykhorst Archives.
The Sheridan Press
The Lance Free Press, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Cowboys & Indians Magazine (2024), “The Constant Caretaker: The Legend of Miss Kate Arnold.”
Sweethearts of the West Blog, Oct 2017, “A Wyoming Ghost Story: Miss Kate.”
Sheridan Media
Find a Grave: Catherine Brockenbrough Arnold (1879 – 1968).
Miss-Kate-Family File from Ann Arnold Hennings
"Reminiscing with Chester Howard, memories from Georgia, Tennessee, Wyoming, and Washington" (1973)
Personal Correspondence with "Miss Kate's" cousin Ann (Arnold) Hennings
Internet Archive
Reflections of the Inn by Patty Atkins (1994)
Photographs from Anita Nichols
Photographs from Helen Laumann
LOC.GOV - Library of Congress
Archives of Michael Dykhorst.
Museum at the Big Horns
Ancestry.com
Champion Funeral Home
Youtube.com
Michael, This is wonderful. I am so amazed at your writing, you are publishing the need to know history of Sheridan. No one else has a talent quite like you, you have a wonderful knack. Please keep it up.