This past weekend, my mom and I went to Jerome. I knew she’d love it because I did, and we tend to have the same kind of taste when it comes to that stuff.
Sunrise view from our hotel; Photo credit: Doree Weller
I was there a year and a half ago with my husband, and I loved it then too. But I “see” different things depending on who I’m with.
The Grand Hotel, high on the hill; Photo Credit Doree Weller
My mom and I stayed at the Grand Hotel. It sits high on the hill above the town and is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in Jerome. We did a ghost tour, and went from boiler room to 4th floor and heard tales of suicides and a potential murder.
See, Jerome was a mining town from the 1900s, and the Grand Hotel was the United Verde Hospital, built in 1926. They had an emergency room, a psych ward, and later, a maternity ward. The hospital was shut down for years, until it was purchased and renovated into a hotel. They tried to keep it quiet that there were ghosts, but people kept asking, so in 1998, they went public and started giving tours.
During the tour, Chris, the owner’s nephew, gave out EMFs, laser thermometers, and digital cameras. I had a camera and got a few orbs, but nothing terribly exciting. Something banged in the boiler room at a dramatic point in the story, but it could have just been coincidence. It probably was… right?
So what do you think? Orb? Speck of dust?
After the tour, my mom was determined to encounter a ghost, so she talked to them and kept prompting them to talk to her. Chris said people could borrow the equipment for the night, so we borrowed an EMF and thermometer. But still… nothing.
After my mom fell asleep, I started to hear an odd rattling. We had already been there the night before, and I hadn’t heard anything like that. It wasn’t like a cell-phone-on-vibrate-rattle (and besides, neither of us missed any calls). I bought a book, Arizona Ghost Stories, by Antonio R. Garcez from the gift shop. In the book, someone mentioned hearing a squeaking noise, as if from an old hospital cart being pushed down the hall. Yeah… I heard that. It also felt like something nudged the bed, hard, about three or four times. So, I’m pretty sure I had a run in with a ghost, and it felt playful rather than malicious, as if they were joking around with me since my mom had been so eager to make contact.
In my opinion, no trip to Jerome is complete without a stop to Nellie Bly, the kaleidoscope shop. So we did that and I bought myself a new and fun kaleidoscope (or three) and then came home to my ghost free environment.
Have you ever encountered a ghost?
Doree Weller 