ARIZONA GHOST STORIES
ANTONIO R. GARCEZ
RED RABBIT PRESS
NEWMEXICO, USA
©2012 by ANTONIO R. GARCEZ
1st E-book edition—2012
Published in eBook format by Red Rabbit Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9740-9883-8
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Some of the places that appear in these stories may have changed ownership or names since the printing of this book. Also some of the individuals who appear in this book have since it’s printing, have moved on, either within this world or into the next. Their stories appear here as they were directly bestowed to the author at the time they were interviewed.
The author took all photos unless otherwise noted.
The author may be contacted at the following:
Cover & book design by Antonio R. Garcez and Hank Estrada
Reviews for
ARIZONA GHOST STORIES
“ARIZONA GHOST STORIES gives a hauntingly accurate overview to the many reports of haunted sites all over the state. It not only lists the places from north to south but quotes the interviews of eyewitnesses giving a remarkable feeling of being there with them as they encounter the unknown. Such sites as the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee to the Jerome Inn come to life in Mr. Garcez’s investigations. His chapter on the reports of ghosts at Tombstone is perhaps one of the best accounts I have seen on this subject.”
—Richard Senate, author
“The accounts range from sweetly sentimental to truly terrifying, but all share the benefit of Antonio’s sensitivity and attention to detail. He shows respect for the tales, and those who tell them, and understands that history and culture are inextricably bound to all folklore.”
—Jo-Anne Christensen, Canadian author
“Arizona could not have asked for a better chronicler of its supernatural landscape than
Antonio R. Garcez. From Arivaca to Yuma, Arizona’s most haunted places are all here! These stories will send shivers up your spine, and rightly so—they all really took place! If you ever wanted to experience something paranormal, let this book be your guide!”
—Dennis William Hauck, author
“These are not long-ago cowboy yarns, but very real, very current ghost stories from a rich and chilling mix of voices. Antonio has a rare talent for telling detail; he paints unforgettably creepy images that linger long after the book is done.”
—Chris Woodyard, Invisible Ink Books
“The reader is transported into the world of the supernatural, by a great storyteller who weaves history and personal interviews into a series of riveting tales, sure to make your skin crawl! Here, restless spirits of the past meet present-day skeptics head on. Memories come to life in the stories from 19 diverse Arizona counties. The thoughtfully told, well-researched stories are sometimes frightening, often times chilling, and always fascinating.”
—Rob & Anne Wlodarski, authors
Foreword
I discovered the work of Antonio R. Garcez while vacationing in Santa Fe. We were going to be there for the better part of a week, and although I’d brought along several books to read at night in our hotel, none of them really interested me, and I spent that first evening watching television. The next morning, in the hotel’s gift shop, I came across a volume titled, American Indian Ghost Stories of the Southwest. The cover featured what appeared to be an Apache skeleton riding a horse through the desert night, with lightning flashing across the sky above two, tall, silhouetted saguaros. I bought it immediately.
I started reading the book that afternoon. After a busy morning sight seeing, window shopping, and taking an historic walking tour, we ate lunch at one of Santa Fe’s many renowned restaurants and then returned to the hotel for a brief rest before heading up Canyon Road to visit art galleries. My three-year-old son was on the bed in the room, taking a nap, and my wife was next to me on the balcony outside of our suite, thumbing through one of the tourist magazines the hotel had provided. It was a warm day, and from down below I could hear the sounds of traffic and brief snatches of conversation from other visitors walking by. It was not an atmosphere conducive to fright, yet as I sat there in the sun, I had chills.
I was reading the story of Sofita Becera, in a chapter titled “Historic Santa Fe, ”the tale of a woman haunted by a spirit attached to a stolen molcajete (a stone mortar used by Native Americans to grind herbs and spices), and the incidents that occurred to her closely paralleled fictional events from my recently published novel, The Return. Only, what happened to Sofita Becera was much creepier than anything in my book.
I sped through the rest of American Indian Ghost Stories of the Southwest, thrilled by the unique tales within the volume. I was impressed with Garcez’s clear, straight forward writing style and his ability to draw out from people their personal supernatural experiences—so impressed, that I wrote him a fan letter immediately upon returning home to California. We’ve been corresponding ever since, and I have since read Adobe Angels: The Ghosts of Santa Fe and Taos, his excellent compilation of north-central New Mexico ghost stories, and have been eagerly looking forward to reading his other books.
So when Antonio sent me a copy of Ghost Stories of Arizona and asked if I would like to write an introduction to the new edition of the book, I jumped at the chance.
If anything, the stories in this book are even scarier than those in Antonio’s New Mexico books. Maybe I’m prejudiced, because I’m from Arizona and am thus more familiar with the locations of these hauntings, but to my mind, these narratives are more intrinsically frightening than those of his previous collections—the ghostly encounters are creepier, more threatening. While reading several of the accounts, I found myself experiencing that delicious frisson that comes from a truly terrifying tale. And I’m not a person who’s easily spooked.
The most exciting thing about this volume, however, is that when I read it for the first time, nearly all of the stories were new to me. These aren’t the recycled myths of my childhood; those urban, suburban, and rural legends appropriated by Arizonans and transplanted to their state, like the Big Foot knock off, The Mogollon Monster, or La Llorona, a New Mexican ghost (who, in the bastardized version I heard, haunted the open canals of Phoenix in the 1960s). No, the tales here are quirkier, more intimate, more obscure, and what grants them the stamp of authenticity, what makes them not only believable but also truly chilling, is the fact that they’re not typical, traditional ghost stories with pat explanations and simplistic cause-and-effect plot lines. Nearly all of these hauntings are open-ended, the cause and origins of the sightings are not neatly spelled out, and the occurrences are not tied up with easy resolutions. Rather, they’re random incidents, resonating with the vague, inexplicable logic of the unknown. There are a few famous hauntings—the Cooper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, two buildings in Jerome—but for the most part, the focus is on unfamiliar episodes in out-of-the-way locations, and that’s what gives this book its singular power.
While the work of Antonio R. Garcez is extremely interesting and entertaining, particularly to those of us who enjoy a good scare, I also believe it performs an important historical/sociological function: setting down the unwritten history of an overlooked subject—paranormal experiences in the Southwest. Although he’s a terrific writer, I think