Arizona - Tombstone

We rolled into Tombstone at sunset. I can't even say that without getting a shit-eating grin on my face.

We literally rode our big, beige, magnificent dodge stallion into the sunset…in freaking Tombstone!

It was fully dark by the time we found a parking spot and were strolling down the wooden boardwalk like a couple of gunslingers searching for a watering hole (you should probably imagine the opposite of this.)  

Even though it was only around 7:30pm, there were still tonnes of tourists walking around in varying degrees of western garb and our excitement was barely contained. Considering the total lack of cheese at our last stop (The Thing!), the presence of duster-wearing, spur-laden, menacing cowboys (actors) walking around like it was any regular ol' day was exactly what we wanted. 

We approached one of the most famous spots in town, The O.K. Corral; “Walk where they fell” was the slogan sprawled on the swinging wooden sign and I got all a flutter picturing Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday slinging their guns in my general vicinity.

I'm your Huckleberry

As if being in this theatrical re-enactment heaven wasn't enough, TJ noticed a poster on the door advertising a ghost tour of the town and subsequent paranormal investigation of the O.K. Corral. Our inner demon hunters raged to the surface and all rational thoughts of finding food and a place to park for the night flew out the window. I immediately began envisioning Dean Winchester rolling up in his big black Impala, sawed-off shot gun full of rock salt slung over one shoulder, yelling at me to “man up, grab the EMF meter and get the hell in the car”. 

We were a bit early so we quickly went in search of sustenance and returned at 8PM to a crowd full of believers and fans of television shows like T.A.P.S. and Paranormal Investigators…we were merely fans of hot boys who slay demons and I felt a bit out of place.

"Justice Jim" Burnett

The tour began outside the O.K. Corral office where our guide Josh told us the story of Justice Jim and William Greene. Greene believed that Justice Jim destroyed a dam on his property and thusly caused the deaths of his oldest daughter and her best friend who were playing in the dry river bed. He walked into the O.K. Corral Office and shot him three times in the chest. Justice Jim staggered from the building and died on the street outside. Now, several accounts of a balding figure with a big bushy beard and dark clothing disappearing into thin air have been reported around the site. 

Our next stop was outside the Tombstone Courthouse. The story here is that in Bisbee, a group of four cowboys walked into the Goldwater General Store with the intention of holding it up for the $8000 in miners’ cheques that were supposed to be housed there. The problem was, when they arrived the cheques weren't there yet, so instead they held up all the people in the store. Unfortunately, someone attempted to go for their gun, and the nervous cowboys panicked and shot everyone in the place, execution style.

John Heith's hanging.

A pregnant woman from Tombstone was among those killed in the Bisbee Massacre, so after the four cowboys were hanged and the mastermind, a fifth man named John Heath, was merely sentenced to second degree murder and life in prison, the people of Tombstone were enraged. He was a baby-killer and they wanted blood! A lynch mob went to the Tombstone Courthouse, broke into to the cells, grabbed John Heith and strung him up just down the block over a telegraph pole. 

Today, a woman who lives down the street has awoken to the sound of a crowd of voices in the middle of the night. On one occasion when she looked out the window she saw a crowd of people standing around the modern telephone pole, in 1800’s dress. 

The recounting of these two stories serves a purpose beyond a history lesson, I swear. 

TJ and I decided to take the second part of the tour, the actual paranormal investigation inside the O.K. Corral. Josh and his friend Dwayne took us inside and basically let us loose…at night…in the dark…by ourselves.

SEEMS SAFE.

I'm not a particularly superstitious person as a rule. I can generally explain away most of the creepy shit that freaks me out in the middle of the night and successfully talk myself off the "it's a serial killer trying to kill me--oh wait, that's just my bathrobe" ledge.

That doesn't mean I don't get freaked out in the dark. Especially when there are creepy mannequins of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday that just stand there in the shadows, acting like they don't come alive and murder unsuspecting tourists in the middle of the night. 

Not wanting to lose all of my carefully cultivated street cred, I found TJ before I could run screaming into the night and we continued our exploration of the Corral as a team. 

We ended up finding a coin operated horse contraption that TJ insisted on riding. What we hadn't counted on was once you put in your .50 cents and the horse started "galloping", the William Tell Overature would blare from somewhere within the bowels of this beast continuously for the entire ride. 

I think my favourite part, however, was that since this was a contraption clearly geared for small children, which TJ is not, it made this groaning noise of protest every time it angled back downwards.

GHOSTS.

After laughing our way back to the group (and taking a particularly creepy picture of TJ) it was now time for our séance in the O.K. Corral office where Justice Jim bit the dust.  

This was where my rational mind took over. I'm not a firm believer in ghosts, I don't know if they can just tell that I'm not going to fall for their mumbo jumbo or whatever, but the closest thing to a paranormal experience I've had was a talking car alarm going off while I was home alone at 14, scaring the bejesus out of me and causing me to flee the house in a pair of my dads ill-fitting size 13 loafers. 

So when our guide Dwayne starts getting real serious about orbs showing up in your photos, and voices talking into your camcorders, and I'm looking around the room at the German tourists in their matching his-and-her cowboy outfits listening to him so intently, I've already checked out. The 20 minutes we spent in the dark with a bunch of strangers asking the potential spirits if they want to talk to us was mildly entertaining, but we didn't see any activity and I really wasn't surprised.

At the end, Dwayne told us, just in case, that when we leave we should tell the spirits not to follow us, as spirits can sometimes attach themselves to you and follow you home. Feeling incredibly ridiculous and extremely skeptical, I half-heartedly mumbled something to Justice Jim about leaving me alone or whatever, and carried on out the door. 

All skepticism aside, though, we had a great time, and Dwayne's offer to partake in another more intense paranormal investigation at 1AM sounded pretty great. 

To be honest, the part where he told us we could use an EMF meter is what really cinched it for me. Because Sam and Dean have an EMF meter...which they use...on Supernatural...the best show ever. 

Send help. 

The Crystal Palace Saloon

We went back to the van, changed into some warmer clothes, made a few phone calls to our parents, excitedly telling them about all the ridiculous things we were doing, and headed back into town.

When we were walking around earlier, there were a few people out and about, music playing from a saloon down the street, and several cars driving around. Now, people were appearing less and less, and Tombstone was becoming slightly creepier by the minute. 

Our two hour investigation of the Crystal Palace was, for the most part, a bit of a bust. 

There were some cool stories, like how the bar is built on top of a blocked off entrance to one of the mines where hundreds of miners died, and how some guy named Johnny Angel wanted his ashes to be kept in the bar and now he sits in a box on top of an old roulette wheel that hangs on the wall. 

Apparently the men’s loo is the most haunted place in the building… and yet we saw nothing to indicate any sort of paranormal activity whatsoever. Some people claimed to hear knocking, and one kid had slap marks on the back of his neck, but I’m more inclined to believe that he put them there himself, and people were just hearing what they wanted to hear instead of there being actual ghost activity.

I think what really threw a wet blanket on the whole affair was the two guys we were paired with were very drunk, and very annoying. We dubbed the more vocal of the two "That Guy" because he just said the worst crap all the time. For example:

It was about 3:30 a.m. when we left the building and though I was completely knackered, TJ wanted to head back to the Courthouse and snap a picture of the telephone pole John Heith was lynched from for her blog. At this point, the dark and sparsely occupied streets of Tombstone that we had walked down at 1AM were even darker and more deserted than before. The wind had started to pick up and the wooden signs hanging over the boardwalk started to creak as we walked past. 

I think because I was expecting something more exiting to happen at the Crystal Palace I desensitized myself to the natural creep-meter that usually follows me around when I’m walking anywhere at night. 

As it were, when we started out walking down the main street in town, I felt relatively safe. The further we walked, and the more the wind started rattling the trees and swinging the signs, my creep-meter started working again. By the time we walked down the side street into the immense vaccum of darkness that let toward the courthouse, my whole body was on high alert. 

I could faintly see something moving behind the white fence of a house on the corner. I could see the bushes in the yard rustling and making a lot of noise, but instead of backing the fuck out of there like I should have, I picked up the pace, aiming for the bright circle of street light illuminating the pavement outside the courthouse. 

I was so focused on my goal of reaching this circle of light, that I failed to notice the creature until TJ reached out and grabbed me. 

"Dude, that's a black cat, don't let it cross your path!" She exclaimed. 

Not far off. 

On any other night, perhaps one where I hadn't just spent four hours talking about ghosts and actively trying to make contact with them, I would have looked at this cat, said a little "hey kitty" and then carried on with my business. 

Tonight, however, my senses were on high alert, and this mother-fucking hell spawn that just appeared out of the darkness like a demonic beast from the netherworld sits down right in front of me and lets out the deepest, and most unearthly 'meow' I have ever heard in my life. 

I ran. 

I was pretty sure TJ followed me, but guaranteeing her safety seemed less important than my escape from whatever nefarious plans Satan's panther had planned. 

I could still hear it bellowing as I careened back onto the well-lit main street of Tombstone. From two blocks away.

It was at this point that I realized we didn’t follow Dwayne’s cardinal rule of paranormal investigating…we didn’t tell the spirits to stay in the Crystal Palace and not follow us home. 

TJ and I started yelling “go home, stay in the Palace, do not follow us back to the van!” 

The meowing immediately stopped. 

And we immediately ran away, hopped in the van and drove the hell out of Dodge.