I [Tried To, But Couldn't] See Dead People
by Girlinavan on Feb.11, 2010, under Uncategorized
Two weeks ago I was looking at my trusty little road atlas (which has a permanent home next to my driver’s seat), and I noticed something to see in Arizona that I’d completely overlooked. I’ve been so busy plotting a route to Tucson and then tracing the pink highways to Bisbee that I neglected to notice TOMBSTONE!
THE Tombstone—full of cowboy ghosts,actors recreating the O.K. Corral gunfight, and souvenirs that say “Earp”. Man, I was so excited upon properly reading the map that I cursed like a sailor and then drove straight to Tombstone from Oro Valley and unknowingly arrived an hour before the Ghost Tour started. Un-be-freaking-lievable! Horseshoes, Miller! Horseshoes!
This may be a long blog post, dear readers, as I intend to rave about how ten dollars bought me the opportunity to hunt ghosts! It’s now kind of ironic that J.T. and I made so many jokes about Supernatural and then filmed a video mockingly pretending to investigate The Thing in Benson—as we later got to truly investigate The Crystal Palace and the O.K. Corral.
But first, I feel a need to write about a faux-dead person that I can see. Pre-Tombstone, J.T. and I spent some lovely days in Oro Valley with a guy who’s just started his own photo blog where his gimmick is to photograph himself looking deceased in a variety of places. To answer your possible immediate questions: yes, it’s a little strange, but it’s an original idea. No, he isn’t really dead. Yes, I let him inside the van, and no, I did not kill him in it—I just took the picture for him. You can check out the photo at http://deadat.posterous.com/
Anyhoo, last Saturday night I rolled into Tombstone just past sunset (har har—guess I took too long looking at The Thing…) and took an educational walking tour of Tombstone in the dark. A local guy who works as a paranormal investigator (yes, there are such people, and no… he did not look a bit like Jensen Ackles) took a group of us tourists around town and told us some true lore about the town.
He said there are three types of hauntings: Residual, Intelligent, and Demon—as well as some sort of side dish involving an imprint on time where a moment in history repeats itself without an actual spirit continually haunting a certain spot. He told us about a man named Justice Jim (someone who, whether officially or unofficially, “ran” the town back in the late 1800s) and how he was shot in the front office of the O.K. Corral. Since then, a lot of people have seen a spirit with a balding head and bushy beard walking down the main street, peering out the window of the office, or standing in its doorway looking contemplatively at tourists.
The Investigator also told of the infamous Bisbee Massacre, where five men from Tombstone rode into Bisbee to rob the general store where the copper miners cashed their paychecks. The men unfortunately arrived before the paycheck money, and decided to rob everyone in the store (as well as anyone who happened to walk by) as a sloppy Plan B. When one of the hostages looked as if they were reaching for a weapon, the men executed everyone against the back wall of the store—including a pregnant woman from Tombstone. A posse was sent from Tombstone to round up the men and one of them later experienced a little vigilante justice when an angry mob of locals strung him up over a telegraph pole near the Tombstone Courthouse as a symbol of what happens to a man that kills one of their own.
Apparently, the hanging of John Heath over the telegraph pole left an imprint on time, and a little old lady who lives near the site often wakes in the middle of the night to the sounds of a crowd outside in the street. The Investigator said that one night, the woman made it to her window in time to see a hazy crowd of folks wearing old-fashioned clothing. Too cool!
After the walking tour, J.T. and I got to explore the O.K. Corral in the dark. We were encouraged to use sound recorders, camcorders, and cameras to pick up paranormal activity, and at one point I was totally alone in the Corral—not counting all the mannequins dressed up like Wyatt Earp. Yes it was creepy, but also completely cool, and during moments where I should be nervous my brain goes on autopilot anyway. It may not be that I have a lot of guts… it’s probably that I leap first before over-thinking.
I took a lot of photographs, shot a lot of video, and took a ride on Champion, the “ghost horse” of the O.K. Corral. There’s more than one ghost tour available in Tombstone, and our Investigator man told us that one of them leads a crowd to the wall outside the Corral and says that if they all listen closely, they’ll hear a ghost horse whinny in the night. The ghost horse is actually a children’s pony ride named Champ that costs fifty cents…
After walking around the Corral and relocating J.T. near the Blacksmith’s shop, I got to participate in a seance-type thing inside the office where Justice Jim was shot and his bearded spirit was later seen. We stood in the dark and one of the other Investigators (who is himself haunted by a ghost named Johnnie) asked questions like “Is there anybody here with us” and “Can you tap on something or move something to let us know you’re here?”
I waited in complete darkness with my camcorder going. I’m pretty sure I forgot to breathe and it was at that belated moment—after the walking tour and the solitary exploration of the Corral—that I finally realized just what the hell I was doing, and my brain said “Christ Kelly, what the f—? You’re waiting for a bloody ghost to talk to you in the dark… who does that!?” It was entirely too late to back out though, so I stood there and listened to the Investigator as he tried to provoke the ghost to do something—including inviting it to speak directly into my camera and telling it my name! You can all watch the video footage—which is mostly of blackness—but the goings-on are still cool to listen to.
Nothing big—according to me—happened in the office. Others say that after the Investigator’s invitation to use my camcorder as a communication device, they heard a slight whisper or shuffle, but it’s barely audible in the footage. I suppose a spirit may have been about six inches from my face, but I prefer not to think about it that way… There were also a lot of tapping noises near the ceiling (which I thought were cooling fluorescent light tubes), and another man with us in the office was adamant that he heard something moving inside a display case. I did not see anything concrete though, and for that I’m almost sure that I’m grateful.
As if it wasn’t nerve-wracking enough in the O.K.’s front office, I then stuck around Tombstone until one a.m. in order to participate in another two-hour paranormal investigation of an old bar called the Crystal Palace. The lights went out and again everyone was told to use camera equipment to pick up orbs, EVP (the voice phenomenon thing) and any wispy spirits that might stop to pose for pictures.
J.T. and I looked for ghosts in all the Palace’s known-to-be-haunted areas; the men’s room (yes, really), the roulette wheel (on top of which sits some old patron named Angel’s ashes in a can…), the pool table, and the basement. It should have been really terrifying but we were put into a group with two dudes, and one of them was That Guy—the loud, un-funny, comedian-type windbag that ruins it for the rest. There’s always a guy like that guy, eh? Like a glitch in the matrix or a black fly in your Chardonnay—he’s unavoidable, really. Piss off a writer and they’ll immortalize you as an idiot in their novel… Do something idiotic around me and I’ll display your douche-baggery on Youtube.
At the end of the Palace investigation (when the witching hour was well and truly past), the Investigators told us to tell any spirits that may be present not to follow us home. Apparently it’s possible for dead folks to attach themselves to live ones and follow them around. Because J.T. and I are ridiculous, we left the Crystal Palace and were so preoccupied with the idea of taking a three a.m. stroll around empty Tombstone that we forgot to say the key phrase and save ourselves from future freaky moments. Oops.
We strolled through dark, windy streets listening to the reproduction tin signs creak and headed for the Courthouse to check out the area around Heath’s telegraph pole. It was absolutely thrilling in a terrifying sort of way, and everything went smoothly until J.T. looked down and saw a crazy little black cat cross her path. This “cat” (I use the term loosely based on its subsequent behavior) started to moan and growl at us, and that was the end of our Courthouse adventure. We walked (almost calmly) back to the van, and the growling continued to echo and follow us up the street, around the corner, and back towards the Crystal Palace.
At that point, J.T. and I both remembered to say the line about not following us and then the growling stopped. Needless to say, I got the hell out of there and spent the night parked on the side of the highway near the Bisbee Tunnel.
Stay in Tombstone; don’t follow us to Texas!
Video:
So there's an orb by the guy's elbow... These were all taken in darkness in the Crystal Palace's basement. I'm going to tell myself it's a dust ball!
