Ghost Story of Santa Fe Ghost Trail

Santa Fe Ghost Trail

As I sat down with the narrator in his dorm on a Sunday afternoon—not the most appropriate time for ghost stories—he told me this well known ghost story from New Mexico. The storyteller is an 18-year-old male freshman majoring in international relations who is from Bethesda, Maryland. He is biracial with an American father and a Taiwanese mother. Born in California and raised in Colorado, the storyteller is a converted Christian. The teller was in the Boy Scouts, which is where this story comes from:

There’s this really small highway town in New Mexico called Cimarron, and it’s small now but in the late 19th century it was a bustling crossroads for all sorts of people – gold speculators, ranchers, oilmen, and especially those vagrant characters, like Billy the Kid, seeking refuge from whatever lawman was on his tail. In Cimarron is this hotel, the Santa Fe Hotel, and they say that this place is the most haunted hotel still in operation, in the west. The lights flicker on and off, and people, visitors just say they encounter really weird things – like if you go in this one room, you might see a woman out of the corner of your eye, sitting on the windowsill and looking out for someone. And when you turn to face her, she disappears, but all of a sudden you smell a subtle waft of strawberry-scented perfume. Weird – yet you still not sure if this is true? Sounds sketchy, I know. Oh – I should say this hotel is haunted because 23 people have been shot to death in the hotel, either from a bar-fight or card-game or something. Well I went to stay at the hotel for a night, before I headed on to a nearby Boy Scout camp. I went with my troop, and we all got our own rooms. Guess what room I got – the strawbe...

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... he brought it back with his great emphasis and repetition of certain words. For example, he repeatedly imitated the clicking sounds that he experienced. This reenactment drew the attention of the audience and placed the audience in the hotel room that he was sleeping in, therefore made the story scarier. Also, the storyteller narrated in the first person. Because his personal experience was incorporated into the story, it made the story seem closer to the audience.

An interesting aspect of the story is that it incorporates an actual location and history into a ghost story: it is intriguing because the mysterious events occur in an accessible place that people can go and visit.

Works Cited

“Santa Fe hotel echoes with legends.” CNN news. Oct 12, 2004. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=475&item=2278226756&rd=1 (Oct 16, 2004).