FriendBurst Blog

Blogging is a rather tricky thing. I don’t know you guys well enough to know if you want me to jump into the heart and soul of ghost hunting or if the details and background are important to you. My goal is to give you a complete picture while giving you some information you can use for your own explorations.

For years, I had wanted to visit Tombstone and in November of 2001, I had my first chance.  Unfortunately, due to time constraints, the entire visit lasted about 45 minutes as the group I was with was headed for Southern Arizona for an overnight expedition. Unfortunately, my desire to return at that time basically went out the door.

The reason was Boot Hill. If you’ve ever been to Tombstone, AZ, you probably know what I am talking about. Boot Hill is, of course, where those who died violently in their boots were laid to spend their eternal rest. The unfortunate tombstones that lined the hill took away from the historical value for me at the time and I didn’t give the town a second thought until a year later.

Thanksgiving 2002, I had just started hanging out with singing cowboy Darrell Lundberg. He was an owner of a party shop in my hometown of Cottonwood, AZ and was interested in the history of Tombstone. While I wasn’t interested in the long venture down there, the man is an absolutely brilliant storyteller so I gave in and we ventured down to mingle with the locals to see if we could gain some unique insight.

When we first reached the town, I was actually surprised to see there were quite a few people hanging around and doing the tourist thing. We headed over to a bookstore run by two very sweet locals, Linda and Rob. Darryl was looking into writing a book about one of the old Wild West outlaws and I was scanning their offerings, looking for haunted places.

While I was scanning the titles and ignoring the trio talking, I ran into an older gentleman. I had mentioned to him that it was upsetting to see that the cemetery had been turned into a tourist trap. He shook his head and laughed. There was actually another cemetery I hadn’t been aware of at the time. Simply known as the Tombstone Cemetery, it might hold a bit more of what we were looking for based on the section I was in.

Once Darryl had finished his conversation with Rob and Linda, we were invited to Killer Karaoke at the local bar that night. This was a locals’ bar, rather than one of the tourist bars. We accepted and that experience was unlike anything I have seen before. Imagine the guy playing Wyatt Earp singing Coal Miner’s Daughter under a dare.

We went down what I recall to be a dirt road and found the cemetery the old timer had mentioned. It looked like your typical turn of the century graveyard with rusted grave protectors and sunken graves. It was late in the day and the sun was hanging low in the sky.

The air was uneasy in the cemetery and I whipped out my camera and took pictures of the graves. Most people use their cameras to take photographs of memorable moments on vacation and I use it to take pictures of tombstones and other weird oddities as I find them.

While we were in the graveyard, Darryl pulled out a tape recorder he had and took notes of some of the different names that interested him and could be used to create the book he was planning to write later on.

On our second day in town, we ended up doing the tourist thing. We spent time in a house that had a huge rose bush (and to this day nothing paranormal that I ever experienced), the saloons and the Birdcage.

It was at the Birdcage that Darryl and I were exploring the facilities and were interested in an old hearse that was in the building. We were sitting there talking about it when I assumed Darryl had put his hand on my shoulder and the smell of cigars grew strong. I remember telling him he needed to hit the showers because he reeked and noticed he was a bit too far off to have been touching me.

He never did smell the cigars and the sense of someone touching you when no one is actually there is rather troubling. We talked about it a few times since the experience and left it at that. It would be 6 years before I would come back and explore the facilities to gain a better understanding of what I experienced there.

But it would turn out we had other paranormal experiences we just hadn’t witnessed yet. After we returned home, our unintentional ghost hunting experience would produce photographs with orbs. One in particularly was a uniquely bright orb in front of what is known as the hanging tree in town.

At the time, I brushed off the photographs as having dirt spots on them. Although, as I learned more about ghost hunting, I realize that these were not simply issues with dust. (The photographs are in storage and we are hunting them down to scan in.)

The other interesting piece of evidence, I am not sure if I am going to be able to do more than a cellphone recording of, if it will work. On the tape recording, when reading one of the names, there was a single whisper that we couldn’t figure out at first. It wasn’t until we raised the sound later on that we made out, “Go away,” in what seemed to be a woman’s voice.

This background is important, because it will play a role in the future ghost hunting expedition we will touch on very soon. Check back Thursday for the 2008 expedition.