Ghost Town, USA - Jerome, Arizona's Haunted History

In “Narrating Self and Other: A Historical Overview” Casey Blanton writes that “A more consciously crafted work of travel literature, while usually existing within a chronological framework, often borrows from the world of fiction to establish motivation, rising and falling action, conflict, resolution, and character.”

Let me tell you a story of history, cultural context, and of a place where the spirits walk.

Once upon a time, high in the mountains of Arizona, there was a ghost town crumbling into the canyon. It was perched on a vertiginous ledge, looking for all the world as if at any moment, the teetering buildings could plummet into the abyss.

But long before it was a town in danger of falling off a cliff, it was more. Much more.

1.75 billion years ago, two ore bodies formed about along a ring fault in the caldera of an undersea volcano. Tectonic plates crashed against each other in a massive collision, causing uplift and erosion which eventually forced the ore bodies upward, into the area that would become Jerome.

The Hohokam were the first indigenous people known to have lived and farmed near Jerome from 700 to 1125 CE. Long before the arrival of Europeans, it is likely that other native peoples mined the area for malachite and azurite - sparkling blue-green copper minerals of great beauty. Spanish conquistadors were the first Europeans to arrive in the area in 1585. Although they did not begin mining the copper immediately, eventually the lands were wrested violently from native peoples and Jerome became a copper mining town controlled by settler-colonists.

In Casey Blanton's "Narrating the Self and Other: A Historical Overview" Blanton comments on the Otherization of non-European landscapes and bodies within travel narratives, and discusses an account written by a Western man (Marco Polo himself) on the appearance of non-European peoples: “This description, emphasizing the otherness of the natives of Zanzibar—their revolting non-Western appearance—easily leads Polo to associate them with demons. It is a good example of the tendency of all travelers until very recently to carry with them the unexamined values and norms of their own culture and to judge foreign cultures in light of those habits of belief, thus establishing a kind of control over them.” This Demonization and dehumanization of non-European bodies for European conquest and power is a dark part of the history of Jerome, but you won't hear a tour guide in this town mention the region's history of Native American "Otherization" for the sake of Western settler colonialism.

You would probably hear a tour guide mention the mining history of the white colonists who took over the area In the late 19th century, when the United Verde Mine began extracting ore bearing copper, gold, and silver from the Jerome mines. In total, the copper deposits discovered in the vicinity of Jerome were among the richest ever found in the world. People flocked to the town to seek their fortunes and strike it rich.

Unfortunately, the copper went the way of all finite resources. As the ore deposits ran out, the mines sank into oblivion in 1953. As a result, the population of Jerome fell to fewer than 100 residents. Desperate, the townsfolk turned to tourism and retail sales to save the town, and in 1967 Jerome became a National Historic Landmark. If you stand on a street corner in Jerome today, you will see art galleries, wineries, coffee houses, restaurants, a state park, museums, and my personal favorite, a luxury kaleidoscope shop.

Jerome also boasts one of the most haunted hotels in the state of Arizona, if not the entire Southwest. In 1927, the United Verde Hospital opened its doors, but it only lasted for a couple of short decades before closing for good in 1950. During this time, more than 9,000 people died at the hospital before the building was sold in 1994. It opened as Jerome Grand Hotel in 1996, and soon after the rumors of ghosts began to circulate. Guests at the Jerome Grand Hotel have reported ghostly apparitions, including the sounds of squeaky-wheeled gurneys on the third floor, which had previously been used as a surgery. Spectral figures, unsettling sounds, and mysterious orbs of light are reported regularly by guests of the hotel.

I stayed in the Jerome Grand Hotel for precisely one night. I was a young woman in search of adventure, a story I could bring with me, away from this strange crumbling town on the cliffside. I stayed in a room on the third floor, with some friends I have known since childhood.

We proceeded to do what any twenty-something in a supposedly haunted hotel would do - we drank in the hotel bar until we were three sheets to the wind, and then we tried to scare each other half to death.

Somewhere after my third martini, I prank called my friend’s hotel room when she went back to the third floor to get her jacket. When she answered the phone, I made scary, stupid, heavy-breathing noises

“I know that’s you, you idiots,” she said, clearly annoyed.

Right before the call disconnected, just for an instant, I heard a child’s voice.

“Hello?” the voice breathed. Then it giggled. A thrill of cold fear shot through my stomach.

The line went dead.

A supposed spirit photo, taken in the Jerome Grand Hotel. Photo Credit AZCentral.com

Works Cited:

Blanton, C. (1997). Narrating the self and other: A historical overview. Travel writing: The self and world. Twayne Publishers.

"Town History". Town of Jerome. 2017.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-contributor/2016/10/18/jerome-grand-hotel-most-haunted-place-arizona/92340696/ - Retrieved May 11 2021

Price, Michael (January 17, 2007). "Jerome: A Ghost Town That Never Gave Up the Ghost". Geotimes. American Geological Institute.