Ghosts and Haunted Places of Taos

By M. Elwell Romancito

As long as there are people, they are going to tell ghost stories. Whether you believe ghosts can be explained away as hot-firing neurons when the body is calling for sleep, a psychological need to connect, an undigested piece of meat or whether you believe they exist – it doesn’t change the fact that people all over the world will tell each other ghost stories at the drop of a hat. This book will take you on a journey through Paranormal Taos and its Historic District. A resident of Taos since 1986, M. Elwell Romancito has written and edited for several publications in the Taos area, including a long-standing relationship as an editor, writer or columnist with The Taos News, The Taos Historical Society, Taos Magazine, Taos Experience, Art Talk, Southwest Art and more. Romancito is a member of New Mexico Research and Investigation of the Paranormal, and has conducted several investigations in Taos since 2011.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329635005

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Ghosts and Haunted Places of Taos

Ghosts and Haunted Places of Taos

The Historic District

By M. Elwell Romancito

Ghosts and Haunted Places of Taos

Copyright © 2015 by M. Elwell Romancito. All right reserved.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission.

For permission requests, please contact: [e-mail]

Printed in the United States

ISBN: 978-1-329-63500-5

Published by Romancito House Media

P.O. Box 3302

Taos, New Mexico 87571

575-613-5330

Cover design by M. Elwell Romancito

Interior design by M. Elwell Romancito

Table of Contents

Ghosts and Haunted Places of Taos

Prologue

Welcome to Taos

Taos Plaza

The Taos Revolt

Padre Martinez

Old Taos County Courthouse

The Mysterious Taos Tunnels

Teresina Lane

The Alley Cantina

La Llorona, John Dunn’s Wife and Floating Lanterns

John Dunn House

The Ghosts of Bent Street

The Taos Inn and Doc Martin’s

The Ghost of Arthur Manby

The Kit Carson Memorial Cemetery

La Fonda on the Plaza

The Redhead of Ledoux

The Ghost Parties and More at the E.L. Blumenschein Home

Doña Luz Street and the Previous Site of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church

Epilog

Bibliographic Sources

Online sources

Prologue

It doesn’t matter whether you believe in ghosts or not.

As long as there are people, they are going to tell ghost stories. Whether you believe ghosts can be explained away as hot-firing neurons when the body is calling for sleep, a psychological need to connect, an undigested piece of meat or whether you believe they exist – it doesn’t change the fact that people all over the world will tell each other ghost stories at the drop of a hat.

There are even new ideas that suggest ghosts are part of a space-time continuum few of us can begin to understand or explain. Ghosts, they say might be inter-dimensional travelers, or aliens. They could even be us – from the future.

A shaman might tell you ghosts and entities fill the landscape of our lives. When pressed, the most open-minded skeptic is going to tell you no one knows for sure.

Many stories about haunted places share fundamental similarities.

It was a cold and windy night, begins the joke about the cliché of nearly all ghost stories. In these stories, there is a place or a dwelling that seems to have heavy, strange energy.

Ghostly encounters also share similar details. They are described as mist-like, shadow figures or looking as though they have been lit with an otherworldly light.

It also follows that places inhabited by humans, over the long haul, seem to have accumulated more ghost stories than the empty wastelands – unless those wastelands are the unlucky location of human death, betrayal or despair. In other words, it almost always takes the black deeds of the living or the harshness of nature to cause a place to be haunted.

And then there are the places that seem to exude energies that are independent of humans and their grunt-y needs. These places are populated by nature spirits and all manner of elemental energies. Some reach far back into the past so distant, as the folks at Taos Pueblo say, Oh, that was back when the stones were soft. Other places seem tainted and stained by energies that appear adolescent, unformed and new.

Taos Pueblo people trace their arrival on the scene more than 1,000 years ago, and if you believe there is an underpinning of truth to all myth and legend, then there is no counting when they actually arrived. Origins are lost in the shadows of time.

Either that or