Hotel Monte Vista's Permanent Residents

Located on old Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona is the Hotel Monte Vista. Constructed in 1926 and opened on New Year's Day, 1927, the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hotel has played host to such notable people as John Wayne, Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, Humphry Bogart, Lee Marvin, Jane Russell, and President Harry Truman, but all of its many distinguished and famous guests came and left after a brief stay. What the Hotel Monte Vista is most famous for are the guests who came and never left.

The Phantom Bellboy - Many guests over the years, especially those staying on the 2nd floor, have reported a knocking at their door and then hearing a faint, muffled announcement, "Room service," but when they open the door, nobody is there. One guest reported he just happened to be walking toward the door in the act of leaving his room when he was startled to hear the knock and voice. He opened his door within 2 seconds and just like all the other reports, nobody was there and no one was in the hall. It couldn't have been someone playing a trick because a person could not have ran away fast enough to not be seen. Even John Wayne reported having the same experience. According to him, when he opened his door, nobody was there, but he could feel a presence as if someone unseen was standing there. The Duke said he didn't feel threatened at all and it seemed to him the ghost was actually a friendly sort.

The Little Boy - Guests have for years reported seeing a little boy wearing "old fashioned" clothes wandering around the halls. Sometimes his voice can be heard as he looks up toward an invisible grownup person beside him. His mumbled words can't be made out, but everyone says it appears and sounds for all the world like he is looking up and talking to his mother. Occasionally a guest reports they were walking down a hall when they felt a cold little hand grasp theirs and when they jump and turn around, the ghostly image of a little boy abruptly vanishes.

The Rocking Chair - By all accounts, Room 305 is the most active room. There have been numerous reports by guests of seeing an old woman sitting beside a window in an old rocking chair. Sometimes the woman can't be seen, but the chair consistently rocks back and forth all by itself. Some unwary guests have been so unnerved by being awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of the chair creaking as it rocks that they went down to the desk in their night clothes demanding someone come back to the room with them and move themselves and their belongings to a different room. Cleaning staff consistently report moving the chair to a different place in the room only to return later to find it back exactly where it had been even though the room had been locked and nobody had been in it. Historical hotel records indicate that an elderly woman was once a long-term border in room 305 and she spent countless hours sitting in that same rocking chair staring out the window. Nobody knows what she was looking at or who she was waiting for. Evidentially she waits and watches for that person even in death.

Baby in the Basement - Probably the most unnerving of all the haunts is that of a crying baby in the basement. Reported time and again by maintenance and laundry personnel, there is never a reason found for the sound, no records exist showing a baby died in the basement, but people are often driven upstairs to escape the pitiful and incessant crying of an infant.  Turnover is normally rather high among staff performing these jobs at any hotel, but it is not uncommon at the Hotel Monte Vista for the personnel to come into the office visibly shaken, turn in their hotel key and quit on the spot while saying, "I can't take it anymore!"

Ghostly Dancers - Lounge staff and patrons have often seen the ghostly apparition of a man and woman dressed in period clothing slowly swaying to music only they can hear out on the dance floor. Their clothing is formal and they are seen laughing as they dance, holding each other close for all eternity.

Phantom Fallen Doves - In the early 1940's, the Red Light District was just 2 blocks from the hotel. One night a male guest of the hotel returned with 2 ladies of the night and they retired to his room, number 306. For one reason or another, both girls were killed during the night, their bodies thrown from the 3rd floor room's window to land on the cold street below. The male guest disappeared without a trace and was never found. For some reason, female guests staying in the room never seem to have any trouble, but male guests often report an uneasy feeling of being watched the whole time they remain in the room. There have been many male guests who reported being awakened in the middle of the night unable to breathe, feeling like a hand is being held tightly over their nose and mouth. Once awakened in such a manner, the men find it impossible to return to sleep because they feel extremely anxious and have a strong sense that someone is in the room "keeping an eye" on them.

Call from the Beyond - Staff working the night shift on the front desk have become accustomed to the desk phone ringing in the middle of the night with a call from Room 210. It only happens though when there are no guests staying in that room. When the call is answered, the clerk is able to make out a faint, scratchy sounding "Hello" through the static noise coming from the handset.

Dead Bank Robber - In 1970, three men robbed a nearby bank. As they were running out with their ill-gotten-booty, a guard pulled a hidden revolver and managed to shoot one of the robbers. Passing by the hotel, the men, not comprehending the severity of their companion's wound, decided to hide out from the arriving police as well as to celebrate their success by having a drink in the hotel's bar. Sitting in a corner booth, the wounded man died before finishing his drink. Since then, staff and patrons have repeatedly reported seeing drinks and even bar stools move seemingly on their own and are often greeted with a faint, but cheery "Hello" from what appears to be empty air as they enter the bar.

Meat Man - In the early 1980's, one of the hotel's long-term guests was known among the staff as "Meat Man" due to his strange habit of hanging pieces of raw meat from the chandelier in his room. The cleaning staff only cleaned his room once each week so it wasn't odd that his body was only discovered in his room, #220, three or four days after his death. The room was cleaned and aired out and 3 days later, maintenance workers were making repairs and updating the room in preparation for the next guests. Breaking for lunch, the men locked the door and left for the break room. Returning about 30 minutes later, the men entered the still locked room to find it in disarray, the bed clothes stripped off and the TV on with the volume turned up. There was also the distinct smell of meat present. The workers found it extremely strange, but assumed somebody had somehow gotten into the room while they were gone. They alerted the cleaning staff to get the room back in order and finished up their work just in time for the arrival of the night's guest. In the middle of the night, that guest, a male traveling alone, rushed downstairs to the front desk dressed only in underwear and a t-shirt very upset because somebody he couldn't see was in his room pulling the covers off the bed! The clerk accompanied the man back up to his room and found the bed clothes strewn around the room in profusion. He also wrote in his report that there was a distinct smell of "raw bacon" in the room. Since then, not every guest has such a terrifying experience, but the staff has leaned to not rent it to anyone traveling with a pet, especially a dog as it will invariably go crazy barking throughout the night, staring intently in corners and often up toward the ceiling, right where meat once hung from the chandelier. 

Located at 100 N. San Francisco Street, this renovated hotel still serves guests today and according to many witnesses, remains home to a number of guests who for one reason or another have chosen to not go toward the light.

    

The Spectral Line Rider

The old barbed-wire fence enclosing a portion of the remote West Texas ranch is long gone, the posts weathered away and the wire rusted to nothing more than red specks. The little cemetery is still there, but the hand-made gravestones and crosses are mostly on their sides laying amongst the rocks where roadrunners hunt lizards for supper. It's hard to get to and nobody much ever does. The ranch itself nothing more than inhospitable wide open spaces that even the Mexicans avoid after crossing the Rio Grande on their way to work the big farms up north during the picking seasons. The ranch house is long abandoned, all the great-great grandchildren of the original land owners living miles away in one big city or another. No, it's not like it used to be. But let me tell you a story about this place, a story from long ago you may find hard to believe.

Juan Delgado, a vaquero who had just hired on, was out alone looking for some lost cattle in this part of the ranch. On the evening of his very first day, he was caught by a sudden thunderstorm. With dark rapidly coming on, even though he didn't relish spending the storm-filled night next to a cemetery, he took the only shelter there was for miles around, the sagging, little church. For Juan, it was to be a long, fitful night as the lightning flashes turned the tumbled gravestones into dark, threatening forms and the rumbling thunder reminded him how alone he was. But he was a proud cowboy and so he hunkered in his poncho and waited out the night.

The early morning light only brought more gray gloom and unrelenting rain. Juan kept to his shelter and ate his breakfast of beef jerky and the last of the coffee he had made the night before. Determined to wait out the rain, mid-morning found him standing in the doorway of the little church watching the rivulets of water swirling by when he was surprised to see a rider trailing along the close-by fence. The horseman was sitting astride a big bay, his face concealed by a broad brimmed black hat pulled low. The man slowly rode closer, his eyes staring fixedly at the ground, his clothes covered by a long black coat. Juan thought only a fool would ride in rain like this so he called out to the man to come share his shelter. The mysterious rider didn't answer or even look up. Perhaps the thunder and noise of the rain on his hat prevented him from hearing Juan's greeting. When he arrived directly across from the doorway, within just a few feet of where he stood, Juan called out again, louder this time, "Come in out of the rain, compadre," but still, the rider acted as if he didn't hear and kept riding, his eyes remained fixed on the ground beside the fence. It was obvious he was riding line, but what was wrong with a man who would not acknowledge a friendly greeting?

Suddenly, the rain ceased falling and except for little gurgling sounds of water draining to low spots, there was silence. It was only then that Juan realized the strange rider's passage was entirely without sound. No hoof beat, no creak of a leather saddle, nothing. The vaquero's hand involuntarily went to the gun in his holster, but the rider was drawing away. Still following the fence line, he passed the cemetery and eventually over a little hill and out of sight. Convincing himself that it was a crazy gringo so dumb he wouldn't even come in out of the rain, Juan tried to put his unease behind him as he gathered his things and prepared to leave.

It had not been an hour later when Juan was ready to resume his search for the lost cows, but before he could mount his horse, he saw the mysterious rider coming back toward him, slowly and deliberately, his eyes fixed on the ground just as before. Had he not found a break in the fence? There hadn't been enough time to repair a break, so why was he coming back already? And then the rider turned from the fence riding toward the little cemetery just below the top of the hill a short distance from Juan. He listened closely, but even in the near silence, neither the rider nor his horse made a sound. This time, Juan did not call a greeting. This time, Juan's gun hand deliberately went to his holster. For what seemed a long time, Juan stared beyond the rim of the hill, but the rider did not reappear. What was going on? There was no fence in that direction; the ranch house was not in that direction. The only thing there was the cemetery. A little voice inside his head told Juan he should leave this place. Quickly. To heck with those missing cows, Juan thought, they can find their own way home. He mounted up and urged his horse at a gallop toward the ranch house miles away.

 Several hours later when Juan reached the house, he rode up to find the foreman and several other hands standing on the porch discussing what chores needed to be done that day. "What the hell kind of fence rider do you have working for you?" "What are you talking about," asked the foreman, "I haven't had anybody riding fence for over a week." "Well I ran into one mighty strange one this morning," Juan replied and then went on to describe his appearance. "Where exactly did you see him?" came the foreman's sharp reply. "At the little church by that old cemetery. I called to him not 20 feet away, but he never even gave me a nod." "Which way did he ride?" the foreman wanted to know. Juan told him which way and that within an hour he had returned.

With that, the foreman turned to the cowboys on the porch and said, "Boys, get your guns. Let's go! Juan, there's food inside. Wait for us here until we get back." The men instantly jumped to the ground and ran to the bunkhouse to get their weapons and then the corral to get their horses. They left riding hard to where Juan told them he had seen the line rider.

It was just after dark when they returned. One of them had been shot in the arm, but they had two men with them who had their hands tied to their saddlehorns. The foreman announced, "We caught these men stealing our cattle and buried two other rustlers. These two will meet their fate at the hanging tree in town tomorrow."

After the two dead-men-walking had been hog-tied and securely locked up for the night in the potato bin, the foreman had a cup of coffee on the porch with Juan. "You saw our fence rider, all right," he told the vaquero. "He was one of the best I've ever known. Always had a gut feel for when there'd been fence cutting. All we had to know was which direction he rode and how long before he got back. Knowing that, it was easy to pick up the rustler's tracks." Juan nodded, but there were questions in his eyes. "He's dead," the foreman said matter-of-factly, "10 years now. He jumped a gang of rustlers, but there were to many of them. He's buried in that little cemetery on the hillside where you stayed. In front of it is exactly where he was killed. Now, every time our fences are cut," the foreman said quietly, "he rides the line until he finds where. Then he goes back to his hillside. Comprende?"

Juan could only nod. The foreman bid him goodnight and walked back into the house leaving the shaken vaquero standing on the porch in the dark. Early the next morning, Juan Delgado saddled his horse, packed his meager belongings and left that ranch. He didn't want anything to do with working alongside a ghost rider.

There were few that believed his story, but it was of no importance to one who had seen such a thing as he had. You may not believe it either and that's ok. The little forlorn cemetery is quietly crumbling, the fence and wooden church gone, the land empty and forgotten. There's no need for a solitary man to ride a lonely string of fence now. If you were to make camp where Juan spent that long, disturbing night, there where the graveyard and church lie hidden, there's probably little chance of your sleep being disturbed by a lone, lack-clad rider.
 

Mary's Bridge

There’s a rural bridge in Louisiana between the little villages of St. Martinville and Broussard with a terrible story attached, a sad tale of a young girl’s horrible death.  The bridge on Bayou Tortue (Turtle Bayou Road) crosses an eerie stretch of swamp where tall cypress trees draped with Spanish moss grow in profusion and alligators and deadly water moccasins wait for their next meal in the dark shadows.  But dangerous creatures of this world are not what keep the locals away from this particular bridge when darkness falls.

In the late 1940’s, a teenage Cajun girl named Mary was, against her parent’s wishes, dating a non-Cajun boy. Not only was he not a Cajun, he had an unsavory reputation for a bad temper and had been locked up in the county jail a number of times for minor, but troubling offenses. Mary was in love with him though and like a lot of teenage girls, thought her parents didn’t understand how much he meant to her. No matter the tension it created at home, she couldn’t stay away from her bad-boy paramour.

In spite of this, Mary was a good Catholic girl and wouldn’t give in to her boyfriend’s sexual advances. No matter how much he pleaded and cajoled, she always stopped him from going beyond what good girls should allow.  One night after meeting up with him in town, she consented to go for a drive. Cruising around the local dirt roads, the boy was drinking moonshine from a quart jar he pulled from under the seat. Mary demanded she be taken home, but as they came to the little Bayou Tortue bridge, her now dead drunk boyfriend stopped the car and demanded she give him what he wanted or he would throw her in the swamp. Poor Mary, totally frightened, began crying and begging for him to just take her home, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. When he reached out and tore the front of her dress, Mary jumped out of the car and began to flee.

As Mary ran across the bridge, her boyfriend managed to catch her and when she began to struggle against him, he smashed the heavy quart jar over her head, knocking her unconscious. In his drunken mind, he thought he had killed her and in an attempt to hide all evidence of his crime, he dumped her into the swamp. The water must have shocked Mary back into wakefulness and her moans let the boyfriend know she wasn't dead after all. As he tried to think what his next move should be, he heard several splashes from the banks of the swamp and saw a glint of light from the car's headlamps reflected in 2 pairs of eyes moving low in the water. Mary's screams indicated the alligators had not gone hungry on this night.

In spite of an intense search by police and volunteers, Mary’s body was never found.  The boyfriend was brought in for questioning, but even though everyone knew he was the last person seen with her when she was alive, police were unable to gather the proof needed to arrest him. Word got out that he had confessed the awful details of his crime to a confident, but bragged he would never be convicted because the police would never find Mary’s body. Several weeks later, the boyfriend himself mysteriously vanished, leaving behind all of his belongings at his parent’s house. It was widely rumored that Mary’s father had seen to it the boyfriend suffered the same fate as his daughter, but the police never saw fit to question him and unofficially seemed to say good riddance.

The case of missing Mary has never been solved or closed and nobody expects it ever will. To this day though, if you go to the bridge at midnight, the same time poor Mary was being thrown to the alligators, turn off your car and call out, “Mary, Mary, Mary,” your car will not start and you will have to push it off the bridge before it will start running again. That’s strange enough, but the locals say if you go there at midnight on the anniversary of her terrible death, you will see poor Mary frantically running up and down the bridge, wearing the long white dress she was wearing when she died, her soul forever imprisoned on the Bayou Tortue Bridge when her life was brutally cut short by a murderous boyfriend.

A Place Called Dismal

Being the lover of odd and strange along the highways and byways of America, I couldn't resist checking out a place named Devil Swamp in Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish west of New Orleans. While driving down a dirt road running beside Devil Swamp, I came upon an old lady slowly walking with the help of a crooked stick she was using as a cane. I stopped beside her and found she was going to the wake of an old friend. I offered her a ride and she gratefully accepted.

As we began to talk, she told me she was a voodoo priestess who had lived deep in the swamp her whole life. I asked her if she knew any stories of the swamp. I figured with a name like Devil Swamp, there had to be some interesting ones and surely she would know them. She told me swamp stories should stay in the swamp, but because I had showed kindness to her, she would tell me of a place in the middle of Devil Swamp called Dismal, a place where even the locals don't go.  It's not on any map and now, so many years later, even most of the Devil Swamp dwellers don't know the story of Dismal; they just know it's a place of strange sounds and strange sightings, not a place to be when the sun goes down. But she knows the story of Dismal because her grandfather, who had been a noted voodoo priest, had told her. This is the story she told me.

In  yesterday years, long ago when voodoo magic was still very much a  recognized religion and practiced openly rather than in secret locations down dark alleyways and deep in the swamps like it is now, a young man by the name of Remy lived on the outer edge of Devil Swamp. Like all the other "swamp rats," Remy had no money, but he was a good hard-working boy from a good family. Remy had fallen in love with Bethany, the youngest daughter of nearby neighbors. Bethany had been flattered by the attention Remy paid her and soon, his affections were returned. They were deeply in love and planned to be married in the spring.

A few weeks before the wedding though, Bethany fell ill. No matter what herbs, chants and spells the local voodoo priest administered, Bethany became weaker by the day, wasting away right before her family and Remy's eyes. In desperation, her family emptied every penny they had saved in the cookie jar and sent for a doctor from New Orleans to save her. In spite of his every effort, Bethany continued her downward spiral and eventually the good doctor determined there was nothing left to do. He prescribed morphine to lessen the pain until the end came.

Hearing the news, Remy refused to leave her side, knowing she could go at any moment. He slept in a chair in her room, his arm extended to lay his fingers on her arm. He sat on the side of her bed holding her hand through the long days, hoping against hope she would get better. The morphine deadened the pain alright, but she was so drugged she didn't recognize Remy even as he stroked her forehead and caressed her hair. 

On the very day they had planned to wed, Bethany awoke, still ill and very weak, but her eyes clear and her mind sharp. Remy took her in his arms and held her close as they talked about the life they would have together someday. He continued to hold her even after she had closed her eyes and taken her last breath. She was buried in a small cemetery on a plot of high ground surrounded by swamp lilies in the middle of Devil Swamp. 

Remy was beside himself with sorrow and would no longer even eat or drink unless begged by his mother. He stayed in his room in the back of their little tin shack for several weeks, day after day, grieving away. Then one bright, cloudless morning, Remy came out of his room and sat down at the kitchen table just as happy as he had ever been. At first his parents were elated, grateful to have their son back, but it slowly became apparent he no longer had a good grasp on reality. He believed his dear Bethany was still alive, having only gone away for a short time to visit relatives. He was going to find her, he said, and then she would come home with him and they would be married. His parents tried to talk to him, to get him to understand Bethany had gotten ill and was no longer alive, but Remy wouldn't have any of that kind of talk. In his mind, Bethany was simply away for a short time and he was going to find her and bring her home. 

For two weeks, Remy went out every day. From before sunrise to after sunset he walked the lonely roads, the walking trails, the game trails, calling out her name, over and over. He became convinced she was living somewhere in the swamp in one of the many abandoned fishing shacks. "I think she is sick, Mamma, very sick and very tired. She thinks she's going to die and she's so afraid, Mamma, and I've got to find her and bring her back. Death is coming for her and I have to find her so I can hide her from Death." With that said, Remy, his eyes filled with the insanity which gripped him, turned away from his desperate parents and ran straight into Devil Swamp.

For several weeks, his family and people in the community hunted the swamp for him, but other than a few fleeting glimpses through the trees and tall grass, he wasn't seen again. He was heard, however, plaintively calling out the name of his beloved Bethany, over and over and over. One could not imagine a more sorrowful, dismal sound.

Even after everyone else had given up, Remy's father would not stop trying to find him. He simply couldn't quit, not when people still reported hearing his son calling out. One evening at dusk, he was in his flat-bottomed skiff in the middle of Devil Swamp very near the little cemetery where Bethany lay in eternal sleep. Just before turning for home at the end of another long, frustrating day, he noticed  hundreds of firefly's blinking their lights while flying just over the dark waters. And then, across the wide pond, he saw his son stumble out of the cypress tree's in waist-deep water. "Bethany!" he exclaimed, "My love, I see your life light!" Perhaps in his maddened mind, he saw Bethany's spirit flickering like a hundred candles. Perhaps he imagined she was extending her hand, beckoning him to her. "Yes, Bethany, I'm coming my beloved!" he shouted.

His father cried out to him, but Remy was beyond hearing anyone or anything of this earth and as his father frantically paddled toward him, Remy rapidly waded toward the firefly's over the deep waters. The pond was wide and his father simply couldn't get to him before the brown waters covered Remy's head.

With help from other men in the little village along the edge of Devil Swamp, Remy's father found the lifeless body of his insane child the next day. They buried him next to Bethany.

Occasionally, people around Devil Swamp still claim to hear strange sounds coming from the middle part of the swamp; a sad, sorrowful sound like someone calling out a name they can't quiet make out. And a few very brave souls who remain in the middle of the swamp after the sun sets claim they sometimes see the phantoms of a young man and woman, reunited in death, floating across the dark waters surrounding the small cemetery now known as Dismal.