Who Ya Gonna Call?

Welcome to Bob's Big House of Hell!

This really happened.

We have a very modest guesthouse on our property. We keep it in a deliberate state of disrepair, to discourage people from using it. But now and then a friend shows up with a suitcase and extremely low standards, and the place is theirs for a few nights.

Recently, one such friend dared to spend the night out there. Early the next morning she asked me whether anybody had ever reported having an "unusual experience" in the shadowy, secluded casita.

Sensing a lawsuit, I said no. Then she explained that she had felt "a very strong presence," one that was so tangible and so creepy she actually phoned her folks back home to make sure they were okay.

Well, that's just dandy! Now I need to deal with spirits? Who's going to clean up after them? Suddenly, I'm the Dude with the Haunted Casita? I don't have time for this. Plus, I checked and our insurance doesn't cover exorcisms at 7,000 feet above sea level, so I'm on my own here.

Our guest's unnerving experience sharply focused my mind on the fact that Santa Fe is a prime magnet for supernatural phenomena. Halloween is over, but spirits, ghosts, phantasms, apparitions and poltergeists are a year-round thing here.

I figured I needed to learn something about this paranormal stuff, and fast!

I thought about taking one of those Santa Fe Ghost Tours, where people meet up at dusk and pay a guide to scare the poop out of them for the next 90 minutes.

But then I realized that would be a rookie mistake. If you want to know how to get rid of a ghost, you don't ask somebody who makes his living by having ghosts around. Then I went on the Internet to research local spirits, and I was left with just one question. Could Santa Fe's ghosts get any more boring?

Ironically, this city attracts the most interesting, colorful and eccentric people alive, but they seem to become insufferably dull in the afterlife. They turn into that person you just can't get away from at a cocktail party, the one who starts every other sentence with, "Anyhoo…."

Take for example Julia Staab, a nineteenth century resident who occupied a Victorian mansion where La Posada is now. It seems Julia was quite the Santa Fe hostess, giving parties "attended by men like President Rutherford Hayes," according to one report. Hayes was the first sitting president to visit Santa Fe.

Huzzah! If you can snag Rutherford B Hayes, you've got a party going on! You may not know this, but first lady Lucy Hayes was known as "Lemonade Lucy" after banning liquor from the White House. Let's party like it's 1880!

But I digress. One bad thing led to another at the Staab mansion, and now they say Julia's spirit haunts La Posada. So is her ghost beheading guests or ripping out their still-beating hearts? No, nothing that dramatic, I'm afraid. People at the hotel say flower vases sometimes move to new locations, toilets flush on their own and a fireplace turns on and off by itself…

Stop all that toilet flushing, Julia! We're in a drought!

Julia is pretty much the high point among our spirits here. After that, it's all down hill. The Courthouse Ghost, the Ghost of Labor Day Past, the Airport Men's Room Ghost, the Ghost Who Liked Kenny G, the Ghost Who Didn't Return His Library Books on Time, the…

Hey! What's this? Look here! I just got an email from somebody who wants to pay us a bundle to stay in our famous haunted casita! I had no idea this could be a profit sort of thing! Well, that's different!

"Hello sir, welcome to Bob's Big House of Hell, Santa Fe's scariest haunted emporium. Just step around these fresh gravestones. Here, hold this lantern while I unlock the door, and…shhhhh… Sir, did you just hear a toilet flushing?"

Robert Basler's humor column runs twice monthly in SFR. Email the author: bluecorn@sfreporter.com

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