SHERIDAN - A pocket of cold air hits you, standing up the hairs on the back of your neck.

Doors lock on their own. A light shines in the window of a room that has no electricity.

The smell of a lady's perfume mysteriously appears and disappears in certain hallways.

Encounters with the ghost of "Miss Kate" at the Sheridan Inn are too many to count. Some say she's still keeping watch over the historic hotel that was her beloved home for 64 years.

Della Herbst is a board member of the Sheridan Heritage Center, which is restoring the old hotel. Since she became involved with the Inn's restoration in 1990, she's had plenty of run-ins with the spirit of Catherine B. Arnold, affectionately called Miss Kate by those who have come to know her.

Herbst said she definitely feels Miss Kate's presence at the hotel.

"You're around her long enough you can't help it. And the worst thing is I didn't even believe in ghosts," Herbst said.

The railroad built the Sheridan Inn in 1893 as a place for people to stay at the end of the railroad line. It was once the home of Buffalo Bill who bought the hotel business, but not the building, in 1894.

Arnold was born in West Virginia and was 19 years old when she arrived by train in Sheridan in 1901. She was hired as a seamstress by the Inn and soon moved into the hotel where she took on other duties.

She lived at the hotel over the next six decades working as the Inn's maid, front desk clerk and main caretaker.

"She had a garden so there were always fresh flowers in the dining room and lobby," said Carla Hager, a former employee of the Inn.

Arnold never married but once had a boyfriend who tried to get her to move to Ohio with him. But she couldn't bear leaving the hotel and the relationship ended, Herbst said.

Despite Arnold's fastidious care, the aging hotel fell into disrepair in the 1960s. She was forced to move out in 1965 when it was bought by a developer who planned to tear it down. The Sheridan Historical Society saved the Inn from demolition in 1967 and a new owner reopened it for dining and dancing.

Arnold died in 1968 at age 86.

"It was her wish when she died that she would be cremated and put back in the building," Herbst said.

Her ashes were placed in the wall of her favorite room on the third floor. They're still in there. And many say her spirit - Miss Kate - is still looking after the old hotel.

After being saved from destruction, the Sheridan Inn was added to the register of National Historic Places and has been undergoing several restorations since the late 1960s.

Today a bustling restaurant, the Wyoming Rib and Chop House, is on the first floor but the Inn hasn't had hotel guests in decades. That's going to change. The Sheridan Heritage Center plans to have 22 rooms for overnight guests when its massive restoration project is completed in the coming years.

The second and third floors have been virtually gutted by construction crews. The floors and roofs, gabled windows and support beams are all that remain. Although one thing was left undisturbed: the remains of Miss Kate in the wall of her third floor room.

The most recent "sighting" of Miss Kate took place this spring, Herbst said.

An electrician snapped a picture of Miss Kate's room before the crew was to begin working on it. He noticed a small wisp in the digital image and showed it to others on the crew. They laughed at him and told him he was paranoid. The next day they brought their own cameras and took pictures in her room. Their images had wisps too.

"When it came time to work on Miss Kate's room they wouldn't go in there," Herbst said. The crew's foreman had to work on her room by himself.

A year ago, Miss Kate appeared in a photograph of work crews raising a corner of the building that had sunk. The snapshot shows the perfect silhouette of a woman in a large piece of plastic sheeting. There she is, plain as day, watching over the workers as they lift her hotel.

Over the years workers have told of feeling mysterious cold spots and experiencing other unexplained phenomena, such as wine glasses that break on their own, doors that suddenly lock and lights that come on.

The power of suggestion may be responsible for some, if not all, encounters people have had with Miss Kate. The eyes see what they want to see. But the nose too?

Walking the halls of the old hotel, Herbst occasionally has gotten a whiff of Evening of Paris perfume, the kind Miss Kate used to wear.

"It hits you as if she had just walked down the hall," she said. "My grandmother wore Evening of Paris perfume so I know what it smells like."

 Miss Kate isn't the only specter that's said to haunt the old hotel.

"We can pretty well identify Miss Kate but there are others. We're not sure who they are," Herbst said.

A cigar smoker, assumed to be a man, is sometimes smelled puffing away in the women's parlour and other rooms.

"We haven't figured out what he's doing in the ladies parlour," she said. "It's that old, sweet, sickening 25-cent cigar smell."

A few years ago, Hagar was working at the hotel's front desk when she suddenly smelled the unmistakable stink of that old ghost's cigar. Her little dog was curled up asleep at her feet but the smell woke up the dog who started sneezing.

She searched the hotel looking for a cigar smoker but didn't find one.

"You didn't see the smoke but it was there, enough to take your breath away," Hager said.

Her little dog kept sneezing and pacing, then the odor vanished. The dog curled up and went back to sleep.

Smoke is a recurring theme.

One night sometime in the 1980s, a barroom employee was closing up the Inn alone at night when he smelled something burning, Hagar said. The man searched the hotel for smoke but couldn't find any. He called the fire department. The firemen arrived, searched around, didn't find anything and left.

The employee walked toward the back exit to leave. As he passed through a small room he smelled smoke again. He called back the fire department and they came and searched for the source a second time. This time they found it: The air conditioner had short-circuited. When the fire threat was gone, the firemen left.

The short in the air conditioner was far away from the rooms where the man had smelled smoke and there was no air conditioning vent in the back room. It must have been Miss Kate warning him of the danger, the man would later say.

"Miss Kate saved the Inn," Hager said.

In recent years people have been having fewer encounters with Miss Kate. Perhaps, because she's happy these days, Herbst said.

"We assume that when things are going well for the Inn we don't hear from her. But when things aren't going well for the Inn we hear a lot from her."