The Bisbee/Tombstone Ghost Report
May 26th – 28th, 2007
Agent Cobra and Jackie
Location
Tombstone, Arizona
(NOTE: CLICK ANY PICTURE TO SEE THE MEGA SIZED VERSION)
For the IMPS Southwestern Division’s second excursion into the paranormal, we decided to travel to southeast Arizona over Memorial Day weekend. Southeastern Arizona is a land of enchantment with some high mountains and basins with rolling grasslands. It isn’t the bone dry, hotter than a sweaty nut sac in Saudi Arabia desert like the areas around Phoenix, Yuma and Tucson. The whole area is full of magic (hea), wonder, illegal immigrants trying to jump the border and GHOSTS!
Yes, there are at least three hot spots that IMPS knows of in southeastern Arizona that are havens for ghosts and history. Tombstone, Bisbee, and Douglas all have their share of haunted places, and we had the pleasure of visiting all three. We visited some of the most famous ghost places of them all so here is our report.
Our ghost investigation started off in Tombstone, Arizona on May 26th, 2007. After a 6-hour drive, we arrived in a dusty old western town where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday used to play sweaty nut sac with the outlaws that roamed the area. Many miners worked deep underground here too with some tunnels going under the city and into the basements of some buildings. This is also the town where Kurt Russel and Val Kilmer said, “You tell them I’m coming…And Hells coming with me.” Kevin Costner also came here and struggled to gain his Dances With Wolves acting glory back. Actually the movies Tombstone and Wyatt Earp were not filmed here which becomes apparent once you step into town.
On the famous Allen Street where the OK Corral is, everything has been brought back to the late 1800s for the tourist’s pleasure. Cowboys with fake guns walk up and down the street while ladies of the night PT young stuboy tourists. Basically, the whole town has been transferred into a tourist trap with junk stores, stores where you can get an old fashioned picture taken, and bars where the clientele are drunken cowboys and cowgirls who take offence if you where a Montana Griz shirt.
One more side note and I will get to the ghost report. We got into town just in time to see the OK Corral shoot out….or at least the build up too it. Actors came walking down the street dressed up as law men chasing actors who represented the Clantons and the McLaurys who got shot at the Corral. Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and Doc were all pissed off but not as pissed as the bad guys. As they approached the OK Corral, Doc Holliday walked over by where we were and talked to some stupid kids. After that, the bad guys went into the Corral and Wyatt stayed behind to sell some tickets. You had to buy tickets to actually go into the Corral to see the shooting so we decided to skip that and go ghost hunting. Below is a picture of the action on the street.
After all that fighting, we decided to go and see a ghost hot spot known as Big Nose Kate’s Saloon. Big Nose Kate was Doc Holliday’s lady friend and often frequented this place. Several ghost are known to stay here too including “The Swamper” who is supposively the old maintenance guy who lived in the basement back in the Saloon’s heyday. The basement was closed so we had to walk around and take pictures while people were eating and drinking at the bar. Below is a picture from inside the bar.
While in the bar, I decided to snap a picture of the balcony. This balcony is the site of many ghostly happenings as reported in one of my ghosts of Arizona books. On this site, two mannequins (were not on the balcony when we were there) fell off and moved around on their own. I snapped this picture hoping to get a ghostly presence. I did capture a couple orbs floating above the TV but once again, IMPS tends to disregard these as dust particles, but for those who believe these are actual spiritual energies, well you have to decide for yourself.
Next, we went probably what is the most famous haunted places in Tombstone, The Bird Cage Theatre. The TAPS crew on SciFi’s Ghost Hunters has visited here and reportedly saw a ghost of a woman upstairs in the theater. As we were soon to find out, it actually costs money to take a tour of the theater now and we didn’t feel like spending 10 bucks to take the self guided tour. Instead we snapped some pictures in the lobby area where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday surely walked through several times.
Several of the pictures have orbs in them. In particular, the picture of the painting with the lady with her bosoms spilling out of her dress has an orb in the top left hand corner. A side note on this picture, there are several bullet holes from bullets shot in the 1800s in the painting that were repaired. Several bullet holes can be found all around the lobby. In the other picture, orbs can be seen above an old stairway leading to a balcony.
After snapping these pictures, I took a picture of the bar area where you pay for the tour. There is a huge mirror, which reflects much of the lobby including the head of a bull coming out of the wall. At first glance, I didn’t notice this but when I saw it, it gave me the chills. I can guarantee you that this picture is not doctored in any way and another picture I have of the bull shows not signs of what appears to be a human face. As seen in the picture of the mirror, what appears to be a human face can be seen on the brown fur of the long horn bull. The other picture of the bullhead head on shows no sign of a face imprinted on the side. Is the face some optical illusion or maybe something more paranormal?
After walking around the Bird Cage Lobby for a while, we decided to continue onto our next part of the ghost investigation, Bisbee. We did not perform any EVP investigations in Tombstone due to the large number of tourists and gunshot sounds that would have polluted our recordings.
Location
Bisbee, Arizona
After driving for approximately 30 to 40
more minutes, we arrived to our final
destination, Bisbee Arizona. Bisbee was
a significant copper mining town at the
turn of the 20th
century. It was once the largest city
between the Mississippi River and San
Francisco. Now it is a historic town
that thrives on tourism and hippies. In
the future, the copper mines could
reopen to supply China’s never-ending
demand for resources. Only then will
UBSTUdios
vision of WWIII come true. Anyway, onto
the ghost review.
We stayed at the Copper Queen Hotel, which has its share of ghosts. The hotel was built in 1902 and is the longest continually operated hotel in Arizona. One of the hotels more famous ghosts is Julia. In life, she was a prostitute. The hotel owner at the time let her do her business in the hotel. Her ghost has apparently has been seen all throughout the hotel but if you are a married man and staying alone in Room 315, she might just do a strip tease for you. Men have seen her in this room where she was known to frequent during her prostitute days. Here is a picture of the door into her room. I didn’t see her or see her in any pictures. We didn’t stay in this room but on the second floor. By the way, the hotel has 4 volumes of Ghost Logs where visitors report their ghostly occurrences. The ghost logs themselves are pretty thick.
That night, I did a couple of walks through the hotel exploring all floors with my camera and digital audio recorder. I didn’t catch anything significant through picture or recordings that night.
The next day, we started out exploring
Bisbee. We took a mine tour of the Queen
Mine, which is a lateral shaft system
that goes deep under the mountain. You
have to dress up in rain slicks and a
hardhat helmet. You go into the mine on
a cart which stops at several places
where you get off and the tour guide
talks about life in the mine. The front
cart actually derailed one time with
people on it. No one was hurt but some
little girl was really crying after
that. Anyway, a picture from inside the
mine below probably proves that most
orbs are just dust particles. The mines
are usually full of dust. Can you see
the mannequin miner in the background
holding a drill? I highly recommend the
mind tour for anyone interested
After the mine tour, we went to the Southeast Arizona Bird Observatory where I saw more humming birds in one space than anytime in my life. We then drove about 45 minutes to Douglas, Arizona which is a border town. This is the town where Pancho Villa would ride into and get rowdy with the locals. There is a haunted hotel here as well where Pancho reportedly walked his horse into the lobby and up the marble stairs. His horse supposively chipped some of the marble that can still be seen today. We didn’t stop at the hotel but drove right to the border where an ugly metal fence separates the US from Mexico. This was the closest I have been so I had to snap a picture. Across the border is Agua Prieta which appears to be a dumpy town much like Douglas is. Below is a picture of the border looking west were Highway 191 (yes the same highway that goes through Rock Springs Wyoming and Chinle, Arizona) ends at it’s southern most point in the US.
After getting harassed by the border patrol for smuggling mantha’s across the border we returned to Bisbee for the old town Bisbee ghost tour. I highly recommend it for ghost enthusiasts. Here is the link http://www.oldbisbeeghosttour.com/ . The tour started off with walking up one of the main streets in Bisbee. The tour guide gave one of the girls in our group an electro-magnetic field sensor. It went off a couple times under power lines and near electrical boxes. At one point, near the Oliver House which is a bed and breakfast, the thing went off and there were no electric lines around or electric boxes that we knew of. The Oliver House has reportedly had 27 murders in the past and is considered one of the most haunted places in Bisbee. I snapped some pictures which happened to capture some orbs. In one picture, you can see the girl holding the EMF detector and people snapping pictures of her. Notice the orb close to the EMF detector.
Next we went across town to The Bisbee
Inn where ghost cats roam and other
ghostly occurrences happen. One such
ghostly occurrence may have saved some
boys lives. One day, three boys were
running around the hotel and ran behind
the hotel where they spotted a lady in
white shimmering in front of them. She
was silent and put her hand up in front
of her to stop the boys from continuing
forward.
Supposively
after they stopped running (stunned by
the appearance of a ghostly woman) the
hillside failed and slid down into the
back wall of the hotel where the boys
would have been running. I snapped a
picture where this event occurred and
got a picture of two orbs floating by
the base of the green door. The girl in
the picture was freaked after I showed
her the picture. The second picture
shows the same location looking in the
opposite direction. The wall on the left
was the wall that replaced the one where
the earth failed and could have killed
those kids.
The next ghost location was the City Park, which used to be a cemetery. Some children playing here have seen ghostly kids coming in and out of the sidewalks where an amphitheater was built over the old cemetery. I snapped a picture here and got several orbs.
The tour ended at the Copper Queen Hotel where the tour guide told the stories of the Ghosts inside. One such ghost is an older man with a black suit and a top hat that can be seen on the fourth floor in the southeast corner of the building. Supposively, if you ride the elevator to the 4th Floor during the day and snap a picture to the right, you may catch a glimpse of this man in a top hat. The ghost isn’t used to live humans coming through the wall at the location of the elevator since the elevator is a fairly recent addition. Many people have supposively seen this ghost. The picture below was snapped after turning right on the fourth floor immediately after getting off the elevator.
One thing I must mention about the tour that was strange, at the beginning, we saw a bunch of bats flying around which is nothing out of the ordinary, but after that, a flock of vultures flew over the town. Then we ran into a one eyed, fat black cat, which walked right in front of my path. Were the spirits trying to tell us something?
After the tour, we immediately tried this but did not capture any pictures or see any ghost. That night, we did a couple walk thru tours of the hotel and some recordings. Once again, the recordings caught nothing special and no photos showed anything out of the ordinary. That night we left the recorder on all night and did capture some strange noises. The building at night wasn’t as noisy as the Jerome Grand Hotel but we did capture what may just be EVPs. Below is a list of EVPs that were heard in Room 204 from the night of the 27th to the morning of the 28th. One of the best EVPs appears to be something saying “Cookie”. It’s funny that we should hear this since the Hotel Staff left cookies for us each time they cleaned the room. We ate the cookies before the time of the EVP recording so maybe, the ghost was looking for them.
Overall, the trip was well worth it. Anyone who likes old mining towns, ghosts, and haunted hotels should go to Bisbee or Tombstone Arizona. The history of the area is rich and the area is full of Ghosts!!! HEA!!!
EVPs CAPTURED WITH BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS (.wav format, cleaned and edited)
The original files are sent to IMPS in Wyoming for editing and cleaning using CoolEdit Pro 2.0 with hiss reduction (which causes odd effects in itself) and volume normalization. Besides those two edits, the clips remain the same with originals in front.
Brushing Teeth - Scratching noises that sound like someone brushing their teeth. Original x1 Amplified and cleaned x1 further cleaning x1
"Cookie" Original x1 Amplified x1 Cleaned x1
Copper Queen Trumpet - What sounds like a trumpet! Original x1 Amplified x1 Cleaned x2
Possible Scary Woman Screaming - This one is disputed, due to recording location, but is eerie nonetheless. Original x1 Amplified and Cleaned x2
Scary Man from Far Away - (Clip 1) A man screaming or shouting from far away, it almost sounds as if he is in pain or crying. Original x1 Amplified x1 Cleaned x2
Scary Man from Far Away - (Clip 2) The same man from above, later in the master recording. A scream and movement can be heard during the man crying as well. Original x1 Amplified x1 Cleaned x1. This is a longer clip.
Scary
"Varoom" with voices and gate rattling
- The voices and gate are due to
proximity of the pool, they are not
caused by the paranormal.
Original x1 Amplified x1
Cleaned x1
Small "Varoom" and Possible Toilet noises This could possibly be a toilet. Original x1 Amplified x2
Small "Varoom 2" or Probable Toilet noises - Similar to the sound above, original is quiet. Amplified and cleaned x2 after original.
Weird Noise 1 - A whirling type sound, possibly pigeons or some kind of owl, but the amplitude suggests otherwise. Original x1 Amplified x1 Cleaned x1
Weird Noise 1 - The same whirling type noise only a different pitch and increased frequency. Could this be a vortex? Original x1 Amp and slight cleaning x1 full hiss reduction x1
Whispers - Sounds like constant whispering, especially during the beginning of the clip. Original x1 Amplified x1 Cleaned x1
Woah - What sounds like a cough. Original x1 Amplified x1 Cleaned x1
All EVPs above are property of the IMPS (Inter-Mountain Paranormal Society). Do not use without written permission from us. If you are interested in using our EVPs or images, please email marsam233ATyahoo.com. Replace AT with @ in your mail program.
(C)2007 IMPS and Ubstudios.com