| Howdy
pardners, and welcome to another Halloween edition of our rootin’
tootin’ folklore column!
This
time we’ve got another in our occasional series of True
Ghostly Encounters for your collective edification. We’ll
be moseying a mite out of state – but not too far...
Let’s
set our course East for a spell. I would recommend making sure
that your A.C.’s working – we’ll be passing
through a whole lot of desert. We’re heading into Arizona,
and specifically down Tucson way, where we’re going to pay
a little visit to the Ghost Ranch Lodge.
Now,
with a name like that, you just know something supernatural is
a-brewin’... Fact is, though, the founder of the Lodge,
a conservationist named Arthur Pack, actually named the lodge
after a dude ranch he’d started out in New Mexico. That
ranch was situated on property that had been the stuff of many
a wild and ghostly legend, and was a favorite of such notables
as artist Georgia O’Keefe, who actually had her ashes scattered
there.
Now,
Arthur pack supposedly brought a ghost or two with him when he
built the Tucson lodge back in 1941, though some will say that
he only brought along a legend or two along with the name. Sadly,
the Lodge in its original incarnation no longer exists, so we
can’t test the waters ourselves. Fortunately, however, I
have the following first-hand account told to me by – well,
I’m sworn to secrecy on this one, so we’ll just say
a “friend”.
Now,
this friend took a group of travelers along to stay at the Lodge
some years ago. She and one other member of the party knew about
the ghost. The others did not, and would have hightailed it out
of there faster than a barrel of jackrabbits had they known!
Naturally,
the ones kept thus in the dark ended up in the haunted room...
Now,
in truth there’s not much to tell here, which is the way
of most true accounts. As a matter of fact, the entire night was
apparently uneventful, as my friends “in the know”
discovered when they all gathered the next morning in that very
room.
My
friend had brought along a shopping bag full of small gifts, and
set it down on the floor. Suddenly, with no wind or discernible
outside influence of any kind, the bag began to move all by itself,
as if being examined by invisible hands...
The
two in the know looked down at the bag, and then at each other,
afraid to say a word. Fortunately, no one else noticed anything.
Then,
several minutes later, the bag suddenly fell sideways onto the
floor, as if pushed!
Now,
such things can happen naturally, I realize, and the two had pretty
much convinced themselves that this was simply a case of some
internal imbalance in the bag, and nothing else.
Then
one of the women who had stayed in that room mentioned a curious
thing.
It
seems that, during the night, while she was sleeping, someone
suddenly pulled all the covers off her bed.
And
none of her roommates would admit to having done so.
The
room suddenly got very cold, as you might expect...
Now,
there’s those that say the room was haunted by a gal named
Mavis, who met with foul play within those very walls.
There
are others, however, who would propose an alternate explanation.
If pressed, they will simply gesture in the direction of the Lodge’s
immediate neighbor – a very large and very old cemetery,
located just across the street from the Ghost Ranch Lodge...
Happy
Halloween! |
