Yours truly and Vegas’ great, Bald Tony, headed out for some ghost hunting adventures last weekend. The town of Jerome, AZ, has survived mine explosions, three major fires, and the reign of Governor Janet Brewer. This town and my old college party house have a lot in common. Incidentally, Janet was barred from The Havoc House my sophomore year. I remember it pained me at the time…having to throw out someone named Brewer.
We wanted to check out The Connor Hotel and a small cemetery outside of town (two known ghoulish hot spots), but the hotel had no lobby at all! MwwaHaHaHa! Now that’s scary. There’s no way upstairs, unless you’re a guest or a ghost. In fact, the only way upstairs was through a door on the street (locked) through an adjacent shop (also locked), and through a back door in the Spirit Room (very locked). The Connor Hotel is said to be home to some nasty spooks, but all the spirits we saw were in The Spirit Room, a ground floor biker bar with nothing remotely palatable on tap. So we asked someone in the shop about the haunted cemetery. Turns out, it’s on private land (aka No Trespassing). But that didn’t stop us—no one would tell us where the damn thing was! This town was starting to piss me off. So we decided to climb up to Jerome’s Grand Hotel, where we found a wonderful restaurant & bar, The Asylum.
The pic is of Bald Tony reading at the bar and, yes, the headline says Jerome Terrorized by Goats! OK, I forgive this town. It’s got spunk…and it’s got rogue goat gangs.
We interviewed the barkeep, Joe C., who claimed the restaurant used to have those little wooden IQ peg games on all the tables. Over the years the games gradually dwindled away, as customers walked off with them, so one night Joe decided to stash the last game up on a shelf. One of the pegs promptly rolled and fell off the shelf. He picked it up and put it back up with the game. The peg then shot straight up, bounced off the ceiling, and landed at his feet (in front of him!). He was nice enough to take a pic of the shelf in question (below). If you look very closely at the image, the trained eye can detect my batteries were about to die. MwahaHaHaHa! Joe also reports catching a shadow walking past room 12, a room believed to be haunted, but he didn’t report much action lately (his anti-psychotic medications are kicking now). He also had a very disturbing tale regarding lousy tippers, who ask a lot of foolish questions about ghosts. Speaking of which, he really earned his dollar that day. Be nice to Joe if you see him; he puts up with a lot for a buck.
About an hour later, we found a young lady, Jamie G., working at The New State Shops and Museum. We asked her if she had ever encountered any strange things in Jerome, besides us.
She said, “I was employed at The Mile High Inn about 4 years ago and one night, while working behind the bar, something weird happened. A wine glass in one of those upside down hanging racks hurled vertically 6-7 feet across the room and broke at my feet!”
I added the exclamation point for dramatic effect. Really, I had to; she seemed pretty ambivalent about the whole thing.
If a wild goat infestation problem wasn’t enough, the streets of Jerome are also said to be haunted by ghostly hookers. One was apparently murdered near The Connor Hotel. She probably couldn’t find a way up to her room. So, always donning my thinking cap, I suggested Tony dress like a 19th century pimp in an effort to lure out the dead Lady’s of the Evening out of hiding. But, as easy going and accommodating as Tony usually is, apparently we reached his red bald-headed limits that day. Next time wear a hat, sport.
Our last stop, The Haunted Hamburger (a real place), didn’t seem to have any stories whatsoever. The staff did the courteous, “Oh, yeah, yeah, old town, old town, lots of spooks, lots of spooks” number.
“But what about stories from this place?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, haunted, haunted, haunted.”
“What have you seen here yourself?”
“Do you wanna burger, pal, or what?”
They had nothing, nothing. No Coke-eh Pepsi. The one place we entered with a ghostly theme was the only true dud. The only thing scary about The Haunted Hamburger was the aftermath of eating there. Tony farted upon leaving and look what happened to this building!
I’m kidding, of course, this was the aftermath of the Nazi’s firebombing of Jerome, circa WWI. You think Arizona was always a desert?
We only talked to three people about ghosts that day, because our main mission was beer, and two of them had great tales to tell. In our opinion, Joe and Jamie both seemed like very credible witnesses. It’s a shame their stories are being told by two Para Abnormal “journalists,” who aren’t.
After studying Jerome, its history, and its people, the Discord Paranormal research team has come to a disturbing conclusion: the ghosts of Jerome are very angry with the beer selection. Think about it…a wine glass broke, not a beer glass, at The Mile High Inn. No good beer on tap there. The Connor Hotel is very haunted and there’s no good beer there. And even Jerome’s Grand Hotel is quieting down since they finally put Arrogant Bastard on tap. Not convinced? We were there the day an event called Blood into Wine was going on. Whatever happened to Beer into Piss? Now that’s an event worth celebrating. The current residents of Jerome cater to wine drinkers, not beer drinkers. Wine is everywhere, but it was nearly impossible to get a good ale anywhere in that one goat town. This was an old mining town, for Pete’s sake. Beer me! Dead people aren’t going to stand for this shit. I just got to Jerome and even I want to haunt the damn place already! I almost died of thirst. You people are even pissing off the goats, let along the ghosts. Build a microbrewery! Build it and they will go. Build it, so Bald Tony and I can come back one day and declare, “This town is clean…and sudsy.”
