HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Artist Neal Forsling's 1929 Casper Mountain homestead, now a county park built around the witch folklore she invented and a Midsummer's Eve tradition.
1620 Crimson Dawn Rd, Casper, WY 82601
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
County park with free grounds access; the museum cabin is open seasonally. The Midsummer's Eve celebration each June 21 is a free community event.
Access
Limited Access
Mountain park with winding gravel roads, forest trails and uneven ground; the museum is a historic one-room log cabin
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1929 · Original 1929 homestead of artist Neal Forsling · Donated to Natrona County in 1973 for preservation · Home of the long-running Crimson Dawn Midsummer's Eve tradition · Example of locally created folk-art mythology and land art
Neal Forsling was a painter, writer, and storyteller who moved to a remote one-room log cabin on Casper Mountain in 1929 with her two young daughters, Jean and Mary. Without many books on hand, she entertained the girls with stories of her own invention. Taken with the deep red of the mountain's sandstone at dawn, she built an imaginary world she called Crimson Dawn, populated by seven witches and other characters who, in her telling, came out to celebrate the summer solstice.
Forsling spent decades on the mountain, eventually with her husband Jim, and her folklore grew into a local tradition. In 1973 she donated the homestead to Natrona County on the condition that the community maintain the land and continue the annual Midsummer's Eve event, with the property to revert to her descendants if it did not. A committed conservationist, she wanted the land protected from development.
The site is now the Crimson Dawn Park & Museum. The original cabin serves as a museum holding mementos of the family's life on the mountain, and the surrounding park preserves the trails, shrines, and markers tied to her stories. Each June 21, the Midsummer's Eve celebration brings more than a thousand people to the mountain. The park was among the Casper-area locations covered in the 2025 season premiere of the television series Ghost Adventures.
Sources
What draws visitors to Crimson Dawn is folklore rather than reported paranormal activity. Neal Forsling invented the seven Crimson Dawn witches and a cast of spirit characters in the early 1930s as bedtime stories for her daughters, and over the decades that personal mythology became a public tradition. During the annual Midsummer's Eve celebration on June 21, costumed performers play the witches and other figures along the park's wooded trails, and visitors move between shrines and markers tied to the stories.
The park's atmosphere, winding mountain roads past old graveyards, the isolated cabin, and the firelit night event, has earned it a place on lists of Casper's spooky attractions, and it was featured in Ghost Adventures' 2025 Casper coverage. But the 'witches' are openly understood as Forsling's creation, performed and celebrated rather than feared. This entry treats Crimson Dawn as a documented folk-art tradition tied to a real person and a real place, not as a claim of genuine supernatural events.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Walk the trails of the Casper Mountain park past old graveyards and the markers and shrines tied to Neal Forsling's Crimson Dawn mythology, and visit her original log cabin museum in season. Self-guided and free.
The annual Crimson Dawn Midsummer's Eve gathering on June 21, when costumed characters from Forsling's witch folklore appear along the trails. It draws more than a thousand people; check the county and museum sites for timing.
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