Matthew P. Mayo - Haunted Old West: Phantom Cowboys, Spirit-Filled Saloons, Mystical Mine Camps, and Spectral Indians

TwoDot/Globe Pequot Press Books by Matthew P. Mayo

Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears:

Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of the Wild West

Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumberjacks:

Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Hardscrabble New England

Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers:

Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Frontier Prospecting

Haunted Old West

Maine Icons:

Fifty Classic Symbols of the Pine Tree State

(with Jennifer Smith-Mayo)

Vermont Icons:

Fifty Classic Symbols of the Green Mountain State

(with Jennifer Smith-Mayo)

New Hampshire Icons:

Fifty Classic Symbols of the Granite State

(with Jennifer Smith-Mayo)

Copyright 2012 by Morris Book Publishing, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

Text design: Sheryl P. Kober

Project editor: Meredith Dias

Layout: Sue Murray

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mayo, Matthew P.

Haunted old West : phantom cowboys, spirit-filled saloons, mystical mine camps, and spectral Indians / Matthew P. Mayo.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7627-7184-4

1. Haunted placesWest (U.S.) 2. GhostsWest (U.S.) I. Title.

BF1472.U6M3925 2012

133.10978dc23

2012010767

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my dear wife, Jennifer, the most spirited person I know!

And for Howard Hopkins, who loved a good ghost story.

Before the Old West, there was the old, old West, a place inhabited for thousands of years by various native tribes. Spiritual residue, accumulated from their countless lifetimes, offers a filamentary foundation on which newer generations of spooks and spirits have since perched. We in the living world do our best to comprehend these curious entities, but despite our best intentions we still dont know much about the other side. We have learned that some ghosts dont want to share their spaces, and yet others seem eager to let us know they are among us. Either way, thats when the inexplicable can happen, when we bump against the spirit world and have a genuine encounter with the paranormal.

In addition to our frequent forays out and about in the American West, my wife and I have had the good fortune to travel overseas. And it was on one such trip that we experienced the supernatural landscape firsthand. Several years ago, at the end of a long day spent touring in Northern Ireland, my wife and I pulled in at a massive old brick hospital-turned-hotel. That alone should have been sufficient warning that all might not be as it initially appeared. But the room price was right and we were knackered from riding all day, so we settled in. Before long we both knew something was wrong with the place, that our room was disturbed somehow; we just didnt know by what.

My wife and I spent a long, sleepless night filled with an uncharacteristic sense of genuine dread and foreboding. We also became convinced somehow that our situation was hopeless, that there was no remedy for our malaise. That heaviness pulled at us until we left the place early the next morning. Within miles we were happy (and relieved) travelers once again.

Did we hear any footsteps in the hall, see any strange orbs of light bouncing around the room, or feel the caress of spectral hands on our hair? Nope. But was the place, and our room, haunted? My response is an emphatic yes. I can only ask that you take my word for it. Was it interesting? In hindsight, absolutely. Would we ever stay there again? Not on your life.

Since then, though, I have become even more open to the idea that ghosts, spirits, spooks, and specters exist. Why shouldnt they? Im reasonably confident that I exist, and Im willing to bet good money that somewhere, a ghost may well be scratching his or her chin in indecision about me and my kind.

If we doubt too much, we run the risk of losing that sense of wonder, excitement, and raw belief in possibility we all had as kids. And thats too bad, because it seems to me we all want to know what we dont know. Its a basic human trait to flip over rocks, all the while suspecting we might awaken something that wished to be left alone. And thats good, because we like to be suitably shaken and stirred. If not, zombie movies would never get made.

Consider the grim scene of a pile of sun-bleached bones at the base of a mesa in a Southwest desert. Or the eerie silence of a ghost town long abandoned by the living. Or the sage-choked mouth of a mine shaft in a long-forgotten canyon. Or a lone, sagging windmill squeaking beside a tumble of logs, once home to a sodbuster. These scenes are all evocative of the Old West of both myth and history. And as we are about to find out, they are also ideal settings for the numerous specters, spirits, spooks, ghosts, shades, apparitions, hauntings, and other paranormal preponderance evident throughout the West of today but rooted in the slowly receding past.

Haunted Old West includes dozens of stories of some of the most actively haunted sites in the continental states west of the Mississippi River (plus Alaska). These locales are steeped in the mythos and mystique of the Old West, from battlefields and burial grounds to hotels, saloons, and wagon trails, from gold mines to ghost towns, from dusty Main Streets to swift-moving rivers, from ranches and cattle drives to stage stations and train tracks.

Not all the stories in Haunted Old West are ghoulish. Some are strange and inexplicable, some are touching and sad, and all are downright fantastic. Given the number of witnesses the attendant spirits continue to receive, it seems the stories are also trueat least to those who have experienced them, and thats good enough for me.

Just ask the tourists whove seen the agitated lone spirit stalking the ramparts of the Alamo, or the little lost boy led back to his hotel room by the kindly ghost of long-deceased Deadwood lawman Seth Bullock, or visitors to Big Nose Kates Saloon in Tombstone, who share the bar with see-through cowboys sidling up for a shot of spirits....

Where necessary, I have used authorial license to fabricate certain characters and combine various ghostly encounters to help illustrate situations and convey what at times is a considerable breadth of historical information in a limited number of words. All of the locations, accounts, and legends in this book are firmly rooted in the days of the Old West, most notably the era of bold westward expansion, and many continue to instigate ectoplasmic episodes and spectral encounters to this day.