Aug 2, 2019
Written by: Darren Dedo
Case Filed: 03/29/19 - Wickenburg,
Arizona
Executive Producer: Rick Garner
Wickenburg, Arizona - where the old
west meets the new west. A town that was founded on "there’s gold
in them hills" has quite the past! That past has merged into a
paranormal present: spiritual energy, phantom apparitions, things
that go bump in the night. This old western town is supercharged
for super natural activity!
To get a good idea why this town is so paranormal--
we first need to take a trip to the past.
“Back in 1863, gold was discovered just
outside of town in a place that became known as the Vulture Mine,"
shared Madam Mariah of
Wickenburg Legends and Ghost
Tours. "And and any time the word "gold" is shouted from
the rooftop you soon have all the men, prospectors, and miners
clamoring around to get their fare share as well. That’s exactly
what happened here. At any one given time, there were 5,000 souls
outside working that hard rock mine, many of them making quite good
for themselves. And, as it turned out many of them wanted to stay
in our area.”
It was an immigrant Henry Wickenburg
who struck it rich at the Vulture Mine - digging up tens of
millions of dollars worth of gold from what turned out to be the
richest mine in Arizona. He ended up establishing a town bearing
his name, Wickenburg, born in 1863. And, like many places out west,
the law was loose and fast: frontier justice. Besides train and
stage robbers, settlers and the U.S. Calvary had to deal with
deadly skirmishes in the Indian wars. And, many lives were lost
when the Hassayampa River dam failed.
“Wickenburg, the largest burg of them
all, was never notified. So, wouldn’t you know at 4am that damn
burst forth like a cork out of a champagne bottle! That water came
ripping and tearing and taking everything with it in its wake! All
the buggies and animals. When it reached Wickenburg below, all of
the men, women and children perished.”
It’s no wonder with such a turbulent past this town is haunted.
So, the Unexplained Cases posse saddled up and road into Wickenburg
to seek out those spirits.Yours truly; my 15-year-old twins - those
trailblazing teens - Gracie and Caroline, my Gen Z ghost hunters;
as always my buddy and Executive Producer Rick Garner; and our
guest investigators, Jaime Veik and Lara Davis from
the
Phoenix
Arizona Paranormal Society.
Our first stop, a place with a sinister past.
“Well, this was, indeed, the famous Texas Hotel where one of our
more infamous villains use to find his victims while he lived here.
None other than Dr. Pierson. He came out west going from town to
town leaving death and destruction behind him all across west. When
he got up to the Vulture Mine, at least 18 bodies became rather
evident before once again before he moved on.”
Old Dr. Pierson got into cahoots with the hotel’s owner and cooked
up a scheme to poison guests and steal their stuff.
“A note would be sent to the doctor
and it'd say something like "I’ve got a live one here!" The doctor
would come calling and take them to dinner and drinks and of course
poison them quite handily as they went alone. By the end of the
night, they’d no longer be alive.”
So, it’s easy to see why the Texas Hotel is said to be
haunted. The hotel is now
Antiques and Artisans
Emporium. It’s current owner, Beth Gallant, told us a few tall
tales about the ghosts who supposedly roam her shop.
“Things move, fall of the shelf and I hear things all
the time. I heard a voice say to me, “I can see you. I was here one
night and it sounded like (knocks several times on counter) from
one corner to the other...like a golf ball on wood. Well, upstairs
it’s carpeted.
Most of the activity is said to happen
in the upstairs of the shop. Apparently, one of Beth’s customers
talks with a couple of ghostly characters, too.
“So, Allison lives upstairs and she won’t leave,
because, she likes it here. She worked here back in the day and she
doesn’t want to leave. Now, she has a little girl up there who is
driving her nuts because she won’t leave her alone. Allison says
she just doesn’t have anytime for herself anymore because the
little girl clings to her. The little girl wont’ leave because
she's afraid of the angels.”
No one knows who Allison and the little girl are and
why they haunt the building. Apparently, they are most often heard
in "the boot room." It was a place that certainly caused a fright
for Caroline.
"That room terrifies me. It makes me feel very vulnerable."
The only way to find out who or what
haunts the old Texas Hotel is to investigate. Lara and Jaime busted
out an arsenal of high tech ghost hunting gear to get answers. One
of those devices measures changes in the electric magnetic fields –
a possible sign of spirits.
“So, this is a REM-pod," says Jamie. "We are going to
leave it in this room, very active room. It goes off, with this
antenna it creates a bubble of energy. So, when it is broken these
lights go. So, I’m going to leave it in this room while we are in
another room.” if
Along with the REM-pod, Jaime and Lara also use a KII
meter. The theory is that it also measures changes in the
electromagnetic field. Fluctuations could mean that spirits are
using energy to try and manifest.
Plus, a digital voice recorder, which
picks up disembodied voices. The twins along with Jaime and Lara
hoped to do just that.
Gracie sits alone in a room.“Hello, Allison are you in
here? I just heard something fall and I’m not sure you did it. But,
if you did can you tell me?"
Early in the evening, Gracie sat down on the floor of
a room. After sitting for a few moments, she hears a loud thump
near here, like something fell. She had hoped that Caroline or
Rick, in the hallway outside had heard the sound as well but was
disappointed that they did not and her digital recorder wasn't on.
Thankfully, her chest-mounted GoPro recorded the sound.
"I definitely feel that you're here right now. I can
feel your energy. For some reason, I feel a bit of pain. Did
someone hurt you? I think I had a dream last night with you in it.
I’m curious....were you trying to talk with me?
“There's a lot of ambient energy on the whole floor,"
shared Lara. "In certain areas there's been some traveling, thicker
energies. Kinda moving around with us. I’ve heard some whispering
which I will check later on my recorder. I’ve been marking it. I’m
hearing some male and female voices. They know we're here.”
Speaking of energy, the boot room is said to be one of
the most active spots in the upstairs of the old Texas Hotel.
Caroline seemed to feel that.
"You guys have ghost hunted before and are used to or
maybe okay with that feeling. For me, it's unsettling."
To reach out to the ghosts, Jaime and Lara used
another piece of equipment: a spirit box. It’s a device that scans
radio frequencies with the idea the spirits can communicate through
white noise. In the boot room, a spirit with an apparent potty
mouth makes themselves known.
“Did you just hear that?" asks Jamie. "It sounded like
'What the hell?' I could be wrong but I swear that was what I am
hearing."
Gracie had mentioned hearing something drop and hit
the floor upstairs. To figure out what was going on, we set up
cameras to roll when no one was in the building and captured lots
of strange sounds ranging from bangs, thumps, and knocks.
Were these noises Allison or the little girl trying to
let us know they’ve never left this world? It's impossible to tell.
But is the old Texas Hotel Haunted? Lara believes it could
be.
“I think the first building was more active. That
happens a lot when you’re investigating. One person picks up on
something and another investigator picks up on something else. So,
for me the first building was more active physically, energy
levels, disembodied voices. But I think overall we picked up on
some good evidence.”
Our next stop, just across the road, is Cactus
Maddy’s Mercantile. Another Wickenburg business…that has a supposed
deadly past. It was the quarters for a Calvary Captain and his wife
and children. After he died in the Indian wars – the mother
allegedly did the unthinkable.
“So, on the day that they were going to be coming for
the boxes to take her over to the church house she had finally had
enough and she broke. She took a knife and she killed the 3
children right on the floor inside the back of the building here.
Which was the captain’s quarters. Then she ran out into the night
and kept running no one knew what had happened.”
Legend has it—a small child …. Maybe one of the ones
who were murdered… haunts the building --- we asked the stores
owner Bob Fuller
“We hear the ball bouncing as far as playing jacks.
We’ll hear it coming from different places in the store and things
will get moved.”
So, we broke out the ghost hunting gear, again, to
investigate Cactus Maddy’s for spirits. This time, we used another
piece of a equipment called an Ovilus. It has a word bank with the
theory being a ghost can use that word bank to communicate. The
Ovilus was very busy speaking to the team.
Cesium...Aunt...15...Such...Business.
Jamie explained that the words can seem random but
when pieced together, they make sense. For example, we were in a
business location and the twins turned 15 last week. Who or what
was trying to get the girls attention? The next response sent
shivers up our spines: Paranormal. It's a word that doesn't come up
often.
You’d think that would be the topper. But, according
to Jaime what happened next with Caroline using the Ovilus was jaw
dropping. Caroline had asked aloud if anyone was in the room with
them. The device interrupted as said "For Me."
"This is a groundbreaking moment. This has never
happened before. Look at the bar at the bottom, it is all the way
to the right, and it has two words. It never comes in two
words."
The spirit continued to reach out to Caroline.
“I said 'Does anyone want to talk in here?' and it
said 'Men.' Maybe there's men in here. It said property. We’re on
their property. The RemPod was going off in the crawl space back
there, the battery is now dead. The Ovilus just said for me. One
word all the way across the energy bar. Wow.”
While that Ovilus was popping, so were the digital
audio recorders. Lara and Jaime captured some good evidence of a
possible ghost trying to communicate to the team.
“Help me. I heard that so distinctly. That’s not what
I was even looking for. You were looking for something else and
that came across
It wasn’t just audio evidence gathered at Cactus
Maddy’s but also visual. While Lara was asking questions on the
spirit box I captured a strange light anomaly. You can see it
moving around that then floating out of screen. Many paranormal
investigators call these orbs—possible spiritual energy. Skeptics
might say this is dust—but, if you look at the pattern of
movement—it doesn’t appear to be a dust particle. Unexplained
indeed.
Just like at the Texas Hotel we also used static night
shot cameras – and, let them roll when nobody was in Cactus
Maddy’s. We got much of the same results: bangs, thumps, knocks,
what sounded like a door slamming, and what sounded like
breathing.
The big question – is the shop haunted? Jamie thinks so.
“First impressions, I would say probably the second
building we were in probably was the most active. Not to say that
we won’t get more EVP’s here or the second place it’s kind of hard
to tell. I think heard more disembodied voices. So, that kind of
tells me there’s more activity in there.”
While Cactus Maddy’s was super charged with spiritual
energy, the same could be said about the old doctor’s office which
happened to be our next stop on our paranormal tour of
Wickenburg.
“For the most part, the hospital was used for the
miners and ranchers. There were accidents happening out at the
mine. The building located next to the hospital was the doctor's
office. He saw many grizzly things. One night, a young boy was
rushed in after being crushed by the machinery at the Vulture Mine.
Those great big huge wheels that were used to create energy pulled
him into their wheels crushing about every bone in his body. No one
could believe he was still alive!”
The miner eventually died and where he perished today
is a State Farm Insurance agency. Yeah, I'm not kidding - an
insurance agency. Employees say it is haven for the paranormal. So
much so the staff won’t stay there after dark.
Jimmie Renouf has worked here at State Farm for the last 14 years.
She says experienced lots of paranormal activity.
“A coworker and I were sitting in the kitchen having
lunch - just talking - we heard this noise. It was like a squeaky
wheel on a gurney. I could hear it going down the hall. We heard it
and when we came around the corner and looked, there was nothing
there.
She describes another incident. "I was sitting at the
one corner desk. It felt kind of weird, but I didn’t pay any
attention to it. But, then. all of the machines one at a time
started going off all the way around the room until they got to my
desk. Then, I went outside because it scared me!"
J.D. Johnson owns the State Farm agency and, he’s felt cold chills
and spirits since moving into the building.
“There’s a concrete cellar that’s underneath the
floor. There use to be a trap door and you could open it up and
walk down into this cellar area. But I had no use for it, so I
filled it in. I’ve heard that’s where doctor would put any dead
bodies waiting for the undertaker to come.”
Nancy Ramos says doors fly open on a cabinet in the
backroom. It’s so bad, they taped them shut. But, it's a strange
shadow that caused a fright, too.
“I’m usually turned the opposite way to doing my work.
So, I can usually tell when someone comes up behind me. And, that
particular day, out of the corner of my eye I thought someone was
standing behind me. I glanced over at the phone, it looked like
there was something - a shadow or something. So, as you can see it
does kind of give you that image. I turned around and everybody was
in their desk. At their desk, sitting down. So, it was impossible
to have someone behind me at the moment. At least I would've seen
them walking away! Everybody looked at me weird and were like,
'What?' You will not believe me. I swear there was someone one
behind me."
It's obvious the staff are little spooked by the
spirits. So, we set up our equipment inside the old doctor’s office
to investigate the paranormal activity there and things went crazy
immediately.
Jamie and Lara's REM-pod began sounding off and
wouldn't stop. Jamie says,“There’s a lot of natural EMF in the air
that can make it go off. But, at this point I can’t tell if it is
natural or spiritual.” He said that's not normal behavior for the
device.
In addition to the REM-pod, the PAPS team fired up
another piece of paranormal gear to measure changes in the
atmosphere inside the building. The Eddi measures three things
which could indicate the presence of ghosts: the temperature,
vibrations, and electromagnetic fields.
Apparently, the ghosts were trying to tap into energy
sources to communicate. For example, I had a fully charged battery
on my camera and then it suddenly was drained to a quarter, This
also happened to other cameras.
Just like over at Cactus Maddy’s, we tracked several
light anatomies shooting across our camera screens. These spherical
balls of apparent energy popped up on camera multiple times. Were
they ghosts or spirits? That's up for debate. We tried to debunk
these orbs as dust but, the pattern of movement seems to indicate
they are some kind of a ball of energy - neither bug or dust.
Something unexplained.
The visual evidence captured was yet again compelling
– but, it was the words from the Ovilus that really helped connect
us with the other side. Remember this was the old doctors
office—the hospital right next door.
Bones...Entire...Jim...Enough...
Other words from the Ovilus:
Store...Human...Story...Light.. and, if you look carefully you can
see light anomaly coming from the Ovilus.
Could this be a ghost? Using the energy from the device to try and
manifest right before our eyes.?
The atmosphere was ripe for activity so Jaime and Lara
turned on the spirit box and reached to the other side. While they
let the white noise play - hoping to hear a word or two to answer
their questions about who are what was in the room with us - the
camera captured another series of light anomalies zipping across
the room.
These circular forms of energy stayed in the room with
us – as we continued to get responses related to Christianity. The
word Thurifer was spoken and no one was familiar with that word.
Rick searched for the word and shared its definition, “The
Episcopal Church...The server or acolyte who carries and swings the
thurible in which incense is burned during the Eucharist and
other liturgies. So, the thurifer has the thurible.
Before that, the words "Bible" and "Mommy" were
spoken. One of the State Farm employees shared that when they play
Christian music during the workday, things are calm. When they do
not, activity increases.
And, after we cleared out the building, we left a
couple of cameras running in hopes of catching more strange
activity. Again, bangs, bumps, thumps, and a male and female voice
were captured.
Is the doctor still accepting ghostly patients? Are
the phantoms looking for a life insurance policy? Well, they’re a
little late for that. All joking aside, it seems like the old
building is buzzing with spiritual activity.
Wickenburg, an Arizona town with a rich wild west
history! And some real ghost stories, too! During our
investigation, we captured phantom sounds, light anomalies, and
spirit energy with apparent messages from the dead. I think from
our time investigating Wickenburg it’s safe to say this
Southwestern town is haunted.