Speaker 1: Ghost Stories of the Rocky Mountains written by Barbara Smith
published by Lumpine Publishing Noisy Smelly Spirits. Santa Fe, New Mexico,
also has its share of mansions, and some of them,
such as the Great Place described below, are haunted. This
particular haunted house dates back to the early twentieth century.
In the years since then, the place has turned served
as an enormous private home, offices, a collection of small
apartment suites, and now and then. No one knows how
it became haunted, but it is believed that the ghosts
who once tormented the people living and working in the
place are now gone. Records of the haunting date back
to the nineteen seventies, when a couple and their small
children lived in the house. They might have been living
there still if the ghostly activity had not forced them
to move out, and getting that move accomplished was no
easy feature. The husband and wife began their preparations to
move out and in orderly fashion, packing their possessions into
boxes and one room at a time. Unfortunately, the very
ghosts that were driving them away from the house did
not seem to want them to move. When they returned
to a room that they had left full of packed courtons,
they would find the contents completely emptied out. Despite the
mat work project that the ghosts were creating, the couple
and their children finally succeeded in getting organized and moved out.
The disruptive spirits, however, stayed on to disturb the next tenant,
a man named Andy, who moved into the place in
nineteen eighty, never expecting that he would be sharing the
premises with some very active and annoying ghosts. The specters
didn't wait long after Andy moved in to make themselves
known to him. Phantom noises began the very first evening
that he spent in the house. Because it sounded like
someone was in the apartment below his, and because he
knew that the space should have been empty, Andy called
the police and reported a burglary in progress. Before the
help that Andy so badly wanted could arrive, the noises
began coming from the area above him as well. Shortly afterward,
the racket became almost defining, and the young man phoned
again for help, but this time he was not able
to hear the person on the other end of the
phone over the sounds. Seconds later, a dreadful sickening smell
invaded the room. Fortunately, the police car arrived almost at
the same time, and Andy, badly destrud began to make
his way down the stairs to greet the officers. As
he stepped outside his own apartment, he distinctly heard the
door of the sweep below his open and then quickly
closed again. Badly frightened but determined to get downstairs, Andy
tried to counsel himself with the fact that he could
see that there was no one else and the stairway.
Despite this knowledge, he clearly heard footsteps ascending toward him,
and seconds later felt a draft, as though someone had
just walked past him. A company. This decidedly unnerving sensation
was the awful smell, again, stronger this time, it was
a smile that Andy later described as being similar to
rotten meat. The police searched the entire boating but found nothing.
This lack of a visible press apparently did little to
consul Andy. He spent that night, which would have been
his first in his new apartment, not there, but at
his parents home. He only felt safe to return in
his suite the next day, and when he did, he
was shocked by the sight that awaited him. Every large
podt planned and the place, and there were many, had wilted.
A closer examination revealed that they had all been frozen.
The second night, the sounds were even louder. Andy repeated
his phone calls for help, first to his parents, and then,
after they driven him to the safety of their home,
to the police. The officers who responded to the call
later reported that the lights on both the second and
third floors of the house were blinking on and off.
Stranger still, these lights seemed to be moving in a
pattern from room to room and floor to floor each night.
For the first week of his lease, Andy tried to
stay over night in his flat. Each night he ended
up fleeing to his parents house. The stress was taking
its toll on the young man. He did not want
this phantom to get the best of him, and yet
clearly it was wondering if perhaps the angry presence was
taking advantage of him Because he was alone. Andy arranged
for two friends to move in as roommates. This change
did alter some aspects of the haunting, but not for
the better. Now three people saw, heard, ann smelled the
increasingly gruesome paranormal activity. The electric lights throughout the building
acted independently of human control. Toilet's flushed when no one
was near them. Andy and his friends watched in silent
horror as door knobs turned and doors open to reveal nothing.
The sickening odors became both more terrible and more pervasive.
After just a few days, the unexployed activities drove Andy's
roommates to seek other accommodation. Not wanting to stay alone,
Andy sought the company of another friend, a man named Ken.
When Ken moved in, he brought his pet cat. However,
the poor cat had an even more extreme reaction to
the apartment than any other humans did. It would stand
in an apparently empty room, staring intently at something before
arching its back, puffing out its fur, and hissing at
whatever only it saw. I've heard it said that ghosts
like empty buildings because people live ones bothered them more
in fact, than ghosts bother people. In the case of
this haunted house, I wonder if that was the case.
For by now, the spirit was clearly angry. It evidently
wanted Andy and everyone else out of its domain, and
its campaign continued. If either Andy or it can't put
a record on the stereo, an invisible hand would lift
the needle arm up and then turned the machine off.
On one occasion, phantom gust of wind began to blow
through the apartment, sending papers and other small objects flying about.
After that particular incident, the windows were all checked and
found to be tightly closed. Next came disembodied in distant voices,
followed by the sounds of mirthless laughter and horrible crying. Finally,
an apparition in the form of a filmy female figure appeared.
A clairvoyant who visited Andy asked if she could look
through the place. Her report confirmed what anyone who had
ever spent any time in the house already knew. It
was indeed badly haunted. The medium saw three spirits, two
women and a man. The odor of the two women
felt trapped in the house and was very angry at
not being able to break free. The other two entities
were merely stranded, reliving there before death lives. The clairvoyants
report deeply distressed Andy. He had taken just about as
much as he could. When he found a priest who
was interested in this situation, he was most grateful for
the man's offer of assistance, as Andy and a friend
watched the priest with whom he spoke, accompanied by two
other clerks, walked slowly through the entire building. They sprinkled
holy water and chanted blessings as they wind. That night
was the first peaceful one that Andy had spent in
the old Santa Fe residence. Despite the newly acquired calm,
Andy was more than ready to move on. He found
a new apartment and began to pack his belongings and
anticipation of moving. The tour was not to be a
simple one, however, for like the tenants before him, Andy's
moving cartons were unpacked by unseen hands immediately after he
packed them. In an odd coincidence, the haunting presents may
well have finally moved out when Andy did. Shortly after
he moved on, the place was purchased by a couple.
They have turned the nearly century old, formerly haunted house
into a successful and apparently unhaunted bed and breakfast establishment.