Tombstone

by Matt Doyle

I've never written this before so bear with me.

I come from Tombstone "The town to tough to die". Well that might be because it's haunted. I think that everyone who lives there has seen the ghost in the court house. She's a mischievous las. Her favorite trick is to materialize on the old road between Tombstone and Sierra Vista. She's caused her share of accidents that way, some fatal.

She's by no means the only ghost, not by a long shot. I can vividly remember one night when a friend and I were sitting on a bench on the boardwalk. It was around 2am, everything was closed, everyone was home, there was no one around, just dead silence. As we were talking we heard the sound of footsteps coming down the boardwalk, but there was no one there. Just the sound of boots hitting the boardwalk and the jangle of spurs. We sat there unable to speak as we watched (heard) the boots walk right past us and down the street, to this day I can still hear the jangle of the spurs.

I'm digressing, this is not what I sat down to write about. I wanted to write about the house that we lived in. It was a very old house built in the late 1800's and located across the street from the OK Corral. The house was built in three sections, the original house then an add on in the center and finally a porch was added on to the back. I lived on the back porch, my mom and sister lived in the front section. The center section was the problem. Not one of us could be compelled to enter that section of the house. It was cold, evil, we never talked about it we just never went there. In the winter when it was too cold for me to stay on the porch and I had to move into the main house, I slept on the couch, even though there was an unused bedroom in the center section. When I would go back and forth from the front to the back I would walk around the outside of the house instead of going through the center.

Although we never saw a ghost in the center of the house we saw it's comings and goings. On many occasions, enough that it no longer seemed weird. We would sit on the front porch and see the front gate unlatch, open and close, then latch again. We never felt any ill will from the ghost that would come through the gate. Perhaps there was more than one ghost in that house, or, the one that lived there viscously guarded it's section of the house.

Since I've left Tombstone I've not encountered any other ghosts, but years later when I went back for a visit I felt them Immediately! If you want to meet a ghost I highly recommend Tombstone. In fact I know just the house you should stay at.