Gladstone, North Dakota is fifteen miles east of Dickinson on Interstate 94.  The town of Gladstone sits high above the Green River which runs through the center of town.  The population of Gladstone according to the 2010 Census was 239.

Gladstone has a Highway that runs through it, called “The Enchanted Highway” that has ten of the largest scrap metal sculptures in the world depicting such things as birds, fish, and grasshoppers.

In the 1970s Gladstone had the “Green River Concerts” which were outdoor music concerts that lasted through the day and into the night, with a high amount of alcohol being consumed, along with marijuana, and LSD.  Some of my older friends in Dickinson who are in their 60s, start giggling when I ask them about the time people demanded to have some of their wine, and they didn’t know that the wine had LSD in it, and they had never taken LSD before, and they went out of their minds in the fields in Gladstone that night.  This is probably why they quit having the Green River Concerts.

This may have been when people in Gladstone started seeing gargoyles.  Some people said, “How can you tell the difference between gargoyles and North Dakotans?”  Some people said that the gargoyles had wings and could fly, which makes them different than North Dakotan people.  A mayor of Gladstone, I’m not going to say which one, said,”I don’t want anybody to shoot at, or try to kill what they think is a gargoyle.  It could be somebody’s kid, or somebody who has something wrong with them.  I have a call in to Fish & Game, and until I have something back from them in writing, I don’t want anybody trying to shoot one.”

The towns people said, “Can we at least call Outlaw Sippin, they investigated the Giant Sea Squid of Sakakawea and that Dennis Johnson thing?”  (Is it any wonder that they would call Outlaw Sippin?  Beni Paulson lives not ten miles away in Richardton.)

The Outlaw Sippin band consists of Brady Paulson, Beni Paulson, Emil Anheluk, and Jessie Veeder.  Jessie Veeder likes to take photographs, so it was her job to stay around Gladstone and try to photograph a gargoyle.  Brady and Beni thought that the gargoyles might be living in the coal mine shafts between Dickinson and Gladstone, so they went to look there.  Emil thought that the gargoyles might have something to do with the Assumption Abbey in Richardton, so Emil went there.

The Assumption Abbey is a Benedictine Monastery that was built in Richardton in 1899.  Today one of the things that the monks do at the monastery is make soap, which they sell at their gift shop.  When Emil went to the monastery to follow his hunch, he didn’t want to let on what he was doing.  He started talking to the monks about the monastery, and what it was like there.  The monks offered to let Emil stay there in an extra room in the dormitory, to dine with them, and to participate in their activities.

A day came and went with Emil living in the dormitory, dining in the hall with all the monks, making soap, and chanting.  Emil liked chanting.  Emil liked it so much and was having such a good time, that he soon forgot about the gargoyles and why he was there.  Had it not been for an intervention by Brady and Beni, Emil might still be there to this day.

Well, Jessie Veeder was supposed to be taking photographs of a gargoyle, and she didn’t see one, and she started talking to people, and there is a bar in Gladstone, and Brady and Beni had to go get her too, and this turned out to be not one of their better cases, but nobody got hurt, and maybe I shouldn’t have even talked about this case.