Who Are the Ghosts of Jerome, Arizona?
Ghostbusters? Scooby Gang? Someone has to be called!
During the 1800s the western expansion of the United States was heavily fueled by the mining of gold and other precious metals. Small western towns began popping up around wherever money was thought to be made. With the speed of these towns and the dangers of mining, there were many accidental deaths occurring throughout the west.
Some like the town of Jerome, Arizona created legends and tales of ghosts haunting the mines where miners met their unfortunate fate. One such miner was a man by the name of Charlie who while working in one of the shafts of the 88 miles of tunnel underneath the city was caught in an explosion.
The blast forced all the other miners out of the area. Each believed everyone had made it out safely but upon realizing Charlie was missing a few ventured back in to try to find him. Inside the tunnel they found his headless body and try as they might, they never found his head.
Only a few short days later, the miners inside the tunnels began hearing heavy footsteps and later found footprints matching the boots worn by the body of Charlie at the time of his death. Word began to spread of the headless Charlie wandering the 88 miles of tunnels looking for his head that to this day has yet to be found.
Throughout the years as people left the town now barren of its precious metals that once made it rich, many residents stayed but like Headless Charlie, not all the residents currently in Jerome, Arizona are alive.
Today we’re looking at some of the ghosts that inhabit the town of Jerome, Arizona, one of the most haunted towns in the United States. A town that at one point was considered a ghost town because of the many residents who abandoned it but now it’s considered a ghost town for the many residents that have stayed wandering around after death.
PART 1 - The Wickedest Town of The West
“By the pricking of my thumb, something wicked comes this way”
William Shakespeare from Macbeth
The US-Mexican War came to an end in 1848 with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo where Mexico relinquished large portions of territory, including what would become the small mining town of Jerome, Arizona.
Building Jerome, Arizona
Though much of the mining frenzy would occur in California for the gold rush, it was known the Black Hills of Yavapai County contained various metals that could one day be profitable. In 1883 the Governor of the Arizona Territory; Frederick A. Tritle, a financier from New York; Eugene Jerome, and two others created the United Verde Copper Company. The group started mining and building a camp nearby named after Eugene Jerome.
Unfortunately, the mining, heavily dependent on copper prices, faced a rocky start and had to be sold off to William A. Clark who was a well-known mining entrepreneur. With the new direction, mining restarted in 1888 and the Jerome Camp began to flourish into a town.
From its modest population of 250 in 1890, Jerome exploded to a population of 2500 by 1900. But the road to becoming a town was difficult, four different fires between 1894 and 1898 caused by mining operations destroyed parts of the town killing several residents.
One of the worst was a fire in September 1898 where the “El Paso Herald” newspaper described the town as “swept out of existence by fire”. Ten residents died and forty went missing from the fire that ravaged the town.
Rebuilding Jerome
But the town was rebuilt and with its booming population along with the money being made, the town was officially incorporated as a part of Arizona in 1899. This allowed the town to receive tax money to build a fire station and enforce fire safety codes, preventing any more dangerous fires from destroying large portions of the town.
Jerome, Arizona quickly became the 4th largest town in Arizona and catered mainly to its high male population. Saloons and brothels lined Main street; gambling, opium use, and prostitution became the main draw of the town— apart from the riches one could make from mining the 88 miles of tunnels underneath the dirt roads.
In 1903 a paper in New York would claim Jerome, Arizona was “The Wickedest Town in the West” while another in San Francisco would call it “The Wickedest Town in America”. And with the amount of death starting to occur, they weren’t far off.
PART 2 - The Ghosts of The Wicked Town
“Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.”
-Jacques Derrida
The supposed wickedness of the town seemed to know no bounds, it’s no surprise with saloons and opium use that the women working in the brothels became targets for the rough men with no respect for others.
Sammie Dean
One case was that of Sammie Dean whose spirit you’ll find wandering the Crib District or “Husband’s Alley” as it was called due to the number of brothels that were once in the area.
Sammie Dean was born in 1892 and found herself working in the brothels of Jerome at some point in the late 1920s. On the evening of July 10th, 1931 after multiple people searched for her, they found Sammie lying on her bed strangled to death.
The murderer was thought to have been a client of hers or a boyfriend but, no one was ever questioned or charged with her murder. Years after her death reports began to come in of the sight of a beautiful woman wandering around the Crib district looking for something or someone.
Many believe this is Sammie Dean looking for her killer alone in the streets where she once worked.
Madam Jennie Bauters at the Mile High Inn
Nearby where you might see Sammie Dean stands the Mile High Inn, previously the Clinksdale building in 1899 but also the home of Madam Jennie Bauters Brothel making her for a time the richest woman in Arizona. In 1903 she left Jerome but was followed by Clement C. Leigh. Clement was a drunk, an opium addict, and in debt which made him a danger to Jennie.
One night in 1905 he went to her home demanding money, and when she refused, Clement shot her in the hip. As she tried to run outside, he shot her two more times from a distance. When he approached her seeing she was still alive his final words to her were, “You aren’t dead yet?” before shooting her in the head.
Clement then laid down next to her and shot himself in the chest. But the shot wouldn’t kill Clement. He was arrested and executed on January 18th, 1907.
Although Jennie didn’t die in Jerome, her spirit is said to be found in the Mile High Inn possibly due to it being the place where she made her wealth and found her peace for most of her life. Guests at the inn claim to see items move and flung around if they’re not placed properly.
Radios are witnessed to be turned on by themselves whenever a maid enters a room and others have claimed to catch glimpses of her ghostly figure keeping an eye on the kitchen ensuring proper care is taken before her ghost disappears.
The Rooms of the Connor Hotel
Just a few doors down Main street from the Mile High Inn is the Connor Hotel where it’s said, rooms 1,2, and 4 are all haunted. First built in 1897, the hotel survived many fires due to its owner, David Connor, investing in its construction of stone and brick before it was required.
After several closures throughout the 1900’s it opened back up in the early 21st century where the first guest was an electrician who ended up running out of his room during the night due to hearing a woman’s laugh and whispers in the dark.
The woman is thought to be the Lady in Red. Others have claimed to see her at the bar for a moment before she disappears. Claims of feeling a cold gentle touch on faces and necks after she disappears are common. But her favorite place to make herself known is in Room one where she’ll not only whisper in the night but also many claim to feel the indentation of someone else in their bed with them.
And if you fall asleep, men claim to see her in their dreams. She’s called the red lady due to her supposedly appearing in pictures as a red smudge although I could find no verified pictures.
In rooms two and four of the hotel, many guests have claimed to hear sounds of a man coughing or scratches coming from cold spots in the rooms. Other guests have claimed the scratches are from a ghostly dog that is heard at night as well.
The Surgeon
On the opposite side of town, you’ll find The Surgeon’s House, a bed and breakfast with a long history and spirits that don’t know they’re dead.
Mining operations in the town meant multiple accidents and deaths occurred almost daily. Many of the miners had parts of their bodies amputated from accidents or in the hospital to stave off infections.
By 1917 a third small hospital was built known as the United Verde Hospital to help with the increase in miners coming to the town and the opening of another mine called the “Little Daisy Mine” or UVX Mine.
But in 1918 the Spanish flu would sweep across the globe killing millions. The United Verde Hospital began incinerating bodies just to keep up with the amount of dead coming through their doors and the limited space of the cemetery. Eventually, even the furnaces in the mines used for smelting ore had to be used to burn the bodies.
By the 1920s the hospital was closed when a new larger hospital opened and was given the name United Verde Hospital. The original became the home to the chief surgeon who supposedly still wanders around the home earning it the name of “The Surgeon’s House”.
Today it’s a bed and breakfast but the chief surgeon still calls it his home. His spirit has been witnessed walking in with his medical bag through the front door and then disappearing into thin air. And if you visit the town on a full moon, the spirits of past patients are said to be seen peeking through the windows and disappearing as you stare at them.
The Jerome Grand Hotel
Finally, the most haunted place in Jerome is the hospital that replaced the original United Verde Hospital, which today is known as the Jerome Grand Hotel.
The hospital first opened in 1927 as a state-of-the-art hospital with elevators, steam boilers, and other amenities not seen at the time. Over the course of its lifetime from 1927 to 1953 it’s estimated the hospital saw almost 9,000 deaths. Almost immediately patients began to see a bearded man roaming the halls who went around turning on the lights, never uttering a word.
At first, the nurses believed this was just delusions of the sick and impaired but eventually the nurses saw him too. One night a nurse saw the bearded man at the end of the hall, believing he was a patient she attempted to approach him. He turned to her, staring at her as she approached. Putting her arm out to grab him, he vanished.
In 1935 a well-known and liked maintenance man named Claude Harvey was found dead in the basement pinned underneath the elevator. At first many believed Harvey had slipped and died in a tragic accident while others believed it was a suicide since Harvey was an experienced maintenance man and wouldn’t have accidentally been pinned.
But after investigators reported their findings that Harvey was possibly dead before being pinned, many believed he was murdered. Although no proof of that ever came to light. After his death, many reported hearing sounds emanating from the empty basement, sounds of his voice coming from the dark, and seeing the elevator moving on its own despite needing an operator.
When the hospital was reopened in the late 1990s as the Jerome Grand Hotel the reports of these ghostly occurrences started back up, now joined by a woman in white, thought to be a nurse, seen on the balcony by passerbyers.
Guests also report hearing strange noises, moans, and groans of pain possibly from the patients who died and suffered in the hospital all those decades ago.
PART 3 - The Ghost Town
“... We tend to spend a great deal of energy in attempting to avoid the truth. We construct an image of ourselves that seeks to shield us from a confrontation with our ghosts.”
Peter Rollins
With so many ghost stories and tales in the small town, it’s extremely hard to verify all the tales but like we have found in most of the stories we tell on this podcast depending on who you ask or where you look the details are often different.
Headless Charlie for example is sometimes described to have lost his head in an undisclosed accident as opposed to a blast from mining operations. Other tales say the miners only found his head and the ghost of his body wanders the mine looking for it.
And we barely even touched the surface of all the supposed ghosts in the town. The Mile High Inn is said to be home to several other ghosts including a cat, a friendly male ghost who plays pranks on the maids, and other shadowy apparitions said to stare and whistle menacingly at staff.
The cemetery is thought to be haunted with many claiming to see dark figures wandering around at night. Almost every other building in Jerome claims to be home to some ghostly apparition or terrifying event.
So why are there so many apparitions and ghosts wandering around the small town of Jerome? Is it really all the deaths that have occurred or are there a more reasonable explanation?
Well, there might be.
A Declining Population
Let’s go back to the early 1900s, despite its population booming and the two mines in Jerome eventually producing a billion dollars in copper, gold, silver, and other metals it was never a smooth road.
Based on census data Jerome housed 2800 residents in 1910, a rise in the price of copper led to a huge boom in the 1920s and early 1930s with a total of up to almost 5 thousand residents. But the great depression and World War II greatly affected the mining production and price of copper, leading to a huge decrease in population.
Eventually, mining shut down and by the mid-1950s the population was down to under 100 residents. The town was officially considered a ghost town, another term for an abandoned town.
Tourism Boom
The remaining residents and an influx of creative residents decided in order to save the town they would have to take advantage of their new status and after creating the Jerome Historical Society began referring to the town as the largest Ghost Town in the United States to help draw in tourism.
And it worked. The population increased to about 250 by the end of the 1950s and then to around 500 where it stays today.
Soon the stories of the ghosts inhabiting the older building of the towns started to spread. Ghost tours began popping up all over town. Restaurants and hotels were renamed to include the word ghost in them to further push the idea of ghosts roaming the town.
This is the main reason why it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where each story comes from, it’s possible the stories of ghosts were made up long ago and have been twisted through time to make them more enticing and bring in more curious people looking to experience a ghost haunting.
In 2019 Jerome, Arizona was part of one of the highest-grossing counties for tourism. A skeptic would say many of the ghost stories were made up to save the town and other stories were created by those who saw what they wanted to see in the dark. With no reason to deny the stories, the town embraced them to continue thriving and living up to the namesake of their town.
But at the same time after reading so many stories about Jerome, Arizona, and reading first-hand accounts and reviews of what people saw or experienced in the town, this is definitely one case where everything is not easily explained without experiencing it yourself.
But how about you? Do you think the town of Jerome, Arizona actually lives up to the title of a ghost town, or is it all just a tourist attraction?
