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The year was 1907. Pancho Villa
and Wyatt Earp were still slinging guns, Arizona had yet to become
a state, and The Gadsden Motel first opened her doors to the West,
providing gracious hospitality to all who passed through.
Named for the famous Gadsden Purchase, the
hotel became a home-away-from-home for cattlemen, miners, ranchers,
travelers and businessmen in the newly settling territory. Over the years, dignitaries and celebrities
were added to her roster; among them, the stars of "The Life
and Times of Judge Roy Bean,'' and several other feature-length
Hollywood movies actually filmed in the hotel lobby.
So much history was made within the walls
of this stately five story, 160 room structure that in 1976, The
Gadsden Motel was proclaimed a National Historic Monument by the
National Register of Historic Places. |
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The apparition of a headless
man has been seen floating down hallways and in the basement. For
some reason the ghost appears most often during Lent. Some witnesses
have described the ghost dressed in khaki army clothing with a cap
on its headless shoulders. The five story, 150 room hotel was built
in 1907. It later burned down and was rebuilt in 1929.
It was restored in 1988, which is about the
time the ghost started showing up. The managers saw the ghost in
a hallway in February 1991, and other employees of the hotel, including
the restaurant manager and elevator operator, have also encountered
the ghastly spirit.
During the holiday season in 1991 the hotel
manager Robin Brekhus had an encounter with the most active ghost
of the hotel. Robin was in the basement, looking for candles because
of a power outage. Her flashlight caught a faceless figure shaped
like a man. "He was dressed in fancy western clothes, like
a gambler or something. It Just Looked like fog to me, but it was
the shape of a person". |
Several years ago while movie was being
shot in the hotel, the head electrician must've felt he was in his own
film. He stayed in room 333 and saw first hand what ghostly activity actually
meant. In the middle of the night, the light started flickering on and
off. If that wasn't enough, his golf bag went flying across his suite,
it's contents going everywhere.
At 2:00 AM on November the ninth 1999 Raul Ramirez
said that he was suddenly woken up because his bed was shaking. He said
the headboard was hitting the wall and he said that it felt like he was
in earthquake. He was staying in room 128.
Another visitor to the hotel had an occurrence
on the same day. Ruth, saw a woman in a great dress in the corner chair
of the ladies room.
We arrived at the hotel at 12:30pm and
conducted interviews with the staff on duty. All of the staff that we
talked to knew of the ghosts and the main stories involved.
After the interviews, we swept the hotel
for unusual electromagnetic fields and took photographs. Many of the photographs
are probably just dust or other airborne particles, however we did get
a very unusual photograph on the third floor (see initial conclusions).
No unusual electromagnetic fields were
found during this visit.
Photographs
Click on the thumbnail
to view the larger image
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This picture (left)
is the most unusual we obtained from the hotel during this ghost
hunt. The figure in the background was not present when the photo
was taken.
This was immediately noticed as
Cody could see the photo being recorded to the camera's disk and
the hallway itself. The only person that he could see down the hallway
was Jessica. |
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