Visiting Tombstone, Ariz., is a haunting kind of experience
By Rosemary McClure, LOS ANGELES TIMES
Inside Bay Area

THEY SAY ghosts walk the streets of this dusty desert town. It's easy to
understand why.
With a name like Tombstone and a frenzied history of bloodshed, this
outpost near the southwestern edge of the United States has a reputation
that's ... well, haunted. And it doesn't help to see a dozen gunslingers
die each day in the town's sandy red dirt.

The fights are staged, but Tombstone's checkered past is real.
Tombstone, which advertises itself as "The Town Too Tough to Die,"
surprised me. So did the spirits of its past.
Nearly half a million people — many of them European — make their
way to this wind-swept corner of the Sonoran Desert each year, jogging
60 miles southeast from Tucson to relive the bittersweet pleasures of
the frontier West. They find a three-block Old Town, where saloons
outnumber restaurants, stagecoaches still rumble down the street, and
locals often wear six-guns along with their Stetsons, kerchiefs and
rawhide boots.
"It's amazing how many people here never grew past the age of 10 or 11,"
said local historian Hollis Cook. "They just keep on playing cowboy."

But in this town of Old West legend and
fantasy, that's considered a plus.
Tombstone owes its notoriety to the media, particularly the Hollywood
variety, which immortalized it in more than a dozen sagebrush sagas,
including the bloody 1993 film "Tombstone," starring Kurt Russell and
Val Kilmer. Ronald Reagan, Burt Lancaster and Henry Fonda were among
other actors who brought fame to the streets of Tombstone.
The cinematic tales are based on the exploits of Wyatt Earp, who, with
brothers Virgil and Morgan and comrade Doc Holliday, made history in the
gunfight at the O.K. Corral on Oct. 26, 1881. When the 30-second fight
was over, three of their adversaries — Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy
Clanton — lay dead. Tombstone residents call it the most famous
shootout in history.

Although that gunfight has garnered all the attention, it is only one of
many deadly encounters that took place in a town where lawlessness often
was the rule rather than the exception.
And modern Tombstone, which owes its livelihood to tourism, makes sure
visitors take notice: Stroll through the Boothill Cemetery, where graves
are marked with narratives such as: "Margarita, Stabbed by Gold Dollar"
and "Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a 44. No Les, No More." Or
walk down Allen Street, where signs denote murder locations: "Curly Bill
Brocius killed Marshal Fred White here on Oct. 28, 1880."

Given that so many of Tombstone's former inhabitants met a violent end,
it's not surprising that shadowy tales of apparitions and phantoms swirl
on the desert wind.
"A lot of people came to live here 100 years ago and never left," said
Bill Huntley, chuckling. "They're all still here, no doubt about it."
Huntley, who has lived in Tombstone for 64 years, owns the Bird Cage
Theatre, one of the few remaining original buildings in town. Some say
the spirits of its bawdy past still celebrate there.

A parapsychology team from Duke University in Durham, N.C., studied
Tombstone's haunted sites nearly half a century ago, Huntley said.
Others have conducted paranormal studies since, including the History
Channel, which recently released a DVD called "Haunted Tombstone."
Not everyone believes the stories. Historian Cook, for one, thinks
they're nonsense: "I never saw anything that would make me believe in
ghosts."

Unlike Cook, I do believe in them. Well, I have no reason to disbelieve.
I've always thought about them the same way I think about Bora-Bora: I
don't have go there to believe it exists. But it's much more interesting
to see it for myself.
The motor trip from Tucson should have taken an hour, but I spent an
extra hour with my motor idling, waiting for construction delays to
clear on Arizona 80.

There was a mix-up at the motel, and no room was available for me
despite having a reservation. I tried to rendezvous with a Los Angeles
Times photographer and found that my cell phone, which works all over
the world, wouldn't work in Tombstone.
I thought about spirits then, and when I took a seat at the daily 2 p.m.
re-enactment of the shootout at the O.K. Corral and a cloudburst struck.
Perhaps the local specters didn't share my eagerness to get acquainted.
"Things like that always happen in Tombstone," I was told by frequent
visitor Ellen Bilbrey of Phoenix.

I put aside my plan to meet a ghost and concentrated on the town
instead.
Carved out of Apache land, Tombstone began as a silver-mining strike in
1877. It was named by prospector Ed Schieffelin, whose friends had
warned him that the only thing he'd find in the region was his own
tombstone; he had the last laugh when he found silver. By 1879, when the
town was incorporated, miners, merchants, gamblers, prostitutes and
pistol-packing cowboys had followed him.

The town mushroomed, burned, was rebuilt, burned and was rebuilt again.
During its rootin'-tootin' heyday in the 1880s, it was one of the
largest cities west of the Mississippi.
At one time, Tombstone was 10 blocks square; now three tidy blocks of
Allen Street remain as the heart of Old Town. The street has been closed
to traffic — which once created a logjam — and the cracked asphalt
covered with packed sand for a more authentic look.

Most tourists pop in for the day, swelling foot traffic on Allen
Street's wide plank boardwalk and jamming into the O.K. Corral for the
gunfight. At other times, visitors must settle for mechanized
gunfighters or catch one of six other gun battles staged in town
throughout the day.

There's a well-maintained courthouse, now a state historic park, where
hangings once took place, and small museums, gift shops, gun shops,
costume and hat shops, many of which have lower prices than in Tucson.
Cowboys and cowgirls are everywhere. There's even a local dog — a
black cocker spaniel named Ms. Lily — who greets tourists in a
pint-size cowboy hat to raise funds for a nearby animal shelter.
There are plenty of places to slake a thirst. I wandered down Allen
Street, stopping in at Big Nose Kate's Saloon, the Crystal Palace Saloon
and, finally, the Dragoon Saloon, where I ran into Mayor Andree
DeJournett, who owns the friendly bar.

The mayor, a fast-talking former Michigan resident who has lived in
Tombstone for three years, has big plans for his adopted town.
DeJournett, 45, likes to talk about his vision for Tombstone. "This
place is alive and vigorous, but it's not easy juggling a town that's
alive with a town that's history. It needs to improve its image."

The region is growing, with retirees and others moving in, he said, and
prices are going up. Homes cost $175,000 to $275,000, "but you can still
get four acres of land for under $75,000."
A man in a wide-brimmed hat joined us. Tex Culpepper was still armed and
wearing the garb I'd seen him in earlier when he played Morgan Earp in
the O.K. Corral re-enactment.
"Why do you do it?" I asked.
He grinned. "This is history. When I do this, it helps keep the West
alive." Culpepper, who said he'd been a cowboy most of his life,
admitted the re-enactments take a toll, even though the gunslingers fire
blanks. His injuries: "a concussion, broken bones, shot once in the
face."

Real-life controversy is alive in this town of 1,700. The National Park
Service put Tombstone on notice last year that its historic district
could lose its status as a National Historic Landmark because of
inaccuracies, such as fake facades, nonhistoric colors and bogus dates
painted on newer buildings.
"People just come in, find an empty lot and build a new old building,"
said Cook. "It's a problem."

In September, a plan was drafted to save the landmark designation,
including changing traffic patterns and adding trees to Allen Street.
The town's progress will be reviewed in two years by the park service.

Ok, what about the ghosts?
A bartender at Big Nose Kate's pointed to photos on the wall that he
said showed apparitions and ghostly orbs. I squinted at the hazy
black-and-white prints. I couldn't see them.
Other shop clerks told me they had heard, seen and smelled things. Cigar
smoke. Lilac perfume. A rowdy crowd when no one was there. One told me
about a mysterious man in black who frequently is seen late at night
near the Crystal Palace.

Longtime resident Huntley told the same story, saying he had seen the
man three times, lounging against a post near the Crystal Palace. Legend
has it that the mystery man is Virgil Earp, who was ambushed, shot and
maimed outside the bar in 1881.
At the Bird Cage Theatre, I struck pay dirt. Employee Bill Clanton — a
descendant of O.K. Corral victim Billy Clanton — said he often heard
things he couldn't explain coming from the onetime opera house and
gambling hall, now a dusty museum.

"They're always moving around in there," Clanton said, pointing to the
museum. "There's laughing and carrying on you can't explain. You can
smell smoke around the dice table. I tell them, 'You leave me alone and
I'll leave you alone.'"

Sarah Washburn, a 19-year-old sales clerk in the Bird Cage gift shop,
said she had a frightening experience her second day on the job.
Washburn, whose work uniform is a dancehall costume — a low-cut
taffeta and lace dress with red feathers in her hair — walked through
the museum and seemed to catch a cowboy's eye.
"'I'll be right down,' he said to me. He was walking up the stairs to
the second floor." She remembers he smelled like cigar smoke. She made
some inquiries and found there was no one in the museum at the time.

"I think he wanted to buy me," she said in amazement. "Oh yeah, I
believe in ghosts."
Later I thought about the stories I had heard. I wasn't convinced. I
needed some after-hours research. Even though Cook said he didn't
believe in ghosts, he had told me to visit Old Town at 10 p.m. "Who
knows what you'll see?"

I returned to Allen Street at 10. A couple of saloons were open, but no
one was on the street. I moseyed down to the Bird Cage and stood
outside, silently challenging its ghosts to perform. A streetlight in
front of the old building started to blink.
"Stop," I said. It stopped.
"Blink," I said. It blinked.
Probably a short, I thought, moving on.

At midnight, I made the rounds again. The streetlight outside the Bird
Cage was on until I stopped in front of it; then it started blinking. I
headed back toward the center of town. A block ahead of me, a man in a
black frock coat and wide-brimmed hat was walking slowly near the edge
of the street. He stopped, turned toward the street and leaned on a
post.
Probably just left a bar, I thought. I steered clear of him and scouted
the town a couple more times.
Nothing.

I glanced down toward the Crystal Palace, where I'd seen the man in
black. He was still leaning against the post.