Happy Halloween
Joshua Bishop
With Halloween right around the corner, local ghost hunters are looking for spooky destinations to investigate.”Arizona’s Haunted History” dives deep into the lore of Arizona’s most haunted locations. From The Birdcage in Tombstone to the Riordan Mansion in Flagstaff, Jill Pascoe has seen it all.
Originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Pascoe has always been interested in ghosts, but her paranormal adventures didn’t start until her time spent working at a museum. Pascoe often heard the stories that the staff told about the resident ghosts.
Intrigued by these stories, Pascoe decided to sniff some out for herself.
Her first investigation took place on a haunted plantation in Louisiana where she was collecting information for her first book.
“All of the sudden out of the darkness this voice started calling out for someone named Randall,” she said.
She was quick to add that at no point in the conversation with the owners had anyone ever mentioned that name. She recalls the moments leading up to hearing the disembodied voice.
“I remember hearing lots of heavy breathing and I was thinking to myself, boy, well this is great.”
After that encounter Pascoe promised herself never to stay in a haunted location by herself again, but that didn’t stop her from publishing her first book, “Louisiana’s Haunted Plantations,” a year later.
Soon after “Plantations,” Pascoe and her husband moved to Arizona where she began research for her second book of specters.
“I started by sending letters out to all the historical locations I could find,” she said.
Most people who had ghosts were thrilled to share them, some wished they had ghosts to share, but some simply did not want to talk about it.
“People think it’s bad press,” Pascoe said. Bad press or not, Pascoe was off to scour the state for evidence of ghastly spooks.
Her search took her to The Birdcage in Tombstone where an employee reported being grabbed forcefully by an invisible hand that his arm was numb for two months. She went to The Oyster House in Tempe, where neighbors reported seeing ghostly apparitions dancing in the upstairs bedrooms and where framed pictures took flight in front of customers.
She went to the famous restaurant The Landmark, which was once used by Mesa Community College but that now caters more towards ghosts who haunt the customer bathrooms.
But by far, Pascoe’s favorite location is Jerome, Arizona, which is often referred to as “America’s Biggest Ghost Town.” Jerome’s past is a violent and tragic one.
Mass fires, epidemics and homicide turned this town into a relic long ago.
Now repopulated, it is not uncommon to walk by the neighborhood playground and see the swings moving continuously on their own, or to hear phantom voices in the night.
In a town that is literally said to have at least one ghost per building, spirits and apparitions are more mascot than monster.
“Ghosts are a part of the community,” Pascoe said of Jerome. “It’s just a common topic.
