Haunted Tombstone

The Bird Cage Theatre was opened on December 26, 1881, by proprietor William J. “Billy” Hutchinson. He was the former manager of the E. Fontana dancehall next door at Allen and Sixth Streets. The Bird Cage kept its doors open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Business at the Bird Cage thrived, and the theater/saloon operated around the clock. It featured a multitude of attractive dancing girls who doubled as barmaids and prostitutes between the shows and during intermissions. The stage shows at the Bird Cage started at nine o’clock in the evening and typically lasted about four hours. The beer was fifty cents if it was purchased on the main floor, but the price doubled if it was bought from one of the private curtained boxes upstairs.

Soon the saloon/theater combo not only gained a reputation as the rowdiest entertainment place in Tombstone, it was reputed to be the wickedest theater between New Orleans and San Francisco as well. The Bird Cage also hosted masquerade balls featuring cross-dressing entertainers performing strange antics and singing raunchy ballads in the most outrageous female costumes.

The design of the theater was similar to many other entertainment establishments that existed throughout the West. Just inside the main entrance was a large wooden bar that catered to the thirst of the audience. After the patrons picked up their drinks, they entered the main hall of the theater. The entertainment was conducted on a stage about five feet above the main floor and fifteen feet square. The stage itself was lit by a row of gas jets that ran along the front side. The evening’s entertainment typically started with a variety show. After the performance was over, the wooden benches were moved off to the side and stacked up so the audience could dance and drink until dawn.

Behind the stage at the Bird Cage is a set of stairs that lead to the lower level. It is 80 percent the size of the building’s upper floor, and these rooms reveal an untouched site from over one hundred years ago. The main room of this level consists of a sizeable private poker room with a small bar and fixtures. This room accommodated the private high-rollers’ poker game. The game seated seven players and a house dealer.

The minimum buy-in was $1,000. The game played around the clock for eight years, five months and three days. Some of America’s most famous businessmen, such as Adolphus Busch and George Randolph Hearst, played alongside Diamond Jim Brady, Bat Masterson, Dick Clark, Doc Holliday and a host of other famous gamblers of the Wild West.

Over that eight-year period, $10 million exchanged hands, and the house took 10 percent. At the far end of the poker room, an old iron gate opens into the liquor and wine room, which still retains its wine and whiskey casts. The downstairs bordello rooms reveal the unspoken visions of the ladies of the night and their clientele. The ruffled-up beds and scattered clothes are real. The original faded carpets and drapes and unique furniture are complemented by the different articles of a former brothel. According to local lore, the end room is where Wyatt Earp and Josephine Sarah Marcus carried on their illicit love affair while she was working at the Bird Cage.

The one design feature that made the Bird Cage unique was its bird cages. These were fourteen private boxes, seven on each side of the main hall, erected high up on the walls. Patrons entered the boxes by ascending a narrow stairway near the front door and following hallways that ran the length of the building behind the boxes. The boxes had a specific purpose, as the waitresses could entertain in private once they had successfully solicited a customer from downstairs. Heavy red-velvet drapes could be drawn to ensure privacy. The cost of renting a box for the evening was twenty-five dollars.

A glimpse into what the Bird Cage was like can be found in the Arizona Daily Star newspaper. A correspondent from the paper visited the theater and wrote about his experience on October 19, 1882:

From its name, anyone would be led to believe it was the abode of canaries, but to the contrary, it is the “cats” retreat. I have heard of the cats capturing the canary, but these cats capture bald heads and guileless youth. The other evening, deeming it my beholden duty, as a Star special correspondent, I visited this noted place of amusement which is situated on Allen Street, between Fifth and Sixth. After depositing two-bits with the doorkeeper, I entered a hall filled with old age, middle age, bald head age (next to stage) youthful age and boy age all sitting around tables drinking promiscuously with the “cats.” I seated myself at one of them and was surveying the gallery when a dizzy dame came along and seated herself alongside me and playfully threw her arms around my neck and coaxingly desired me to “set ’em up.” All knowing my bashful and guileless ways can imagine my “set back.” I thought that all of the congregated audience had their eyes on me, and the hot blood surged through my cheeks. Her bosom was so painfully close to my cheek that I believed I had again returned to my infantile period. To escape from this predicament, I immediately ordered them up. She and I, after drinking the liquid, parted at last—she [to] search for some other gullible “gummie.” During the evening a like operation occurred with me at least a dozen times, all with different “dizzies.” The variety performance was very good. The only objection I entertained was the manner in which the girls dressed, being too much on the order of mother Eve while in the Garden of Eden. But it seems to please high-forehead gentlemen occupying the seats next to the stage. The Bird Cage is run nearly on the same style as Buckley’s in San Francisco, and is a paying institution. Great improvements are being made this week. A larger stage is being built. Some of the talent that graced the proscenium here has left for Tucson, under engagement to Levin. I will wager that in one month from date all the bloods of your city will be broke. Variety theaters are great institutions for Proprietors, but a bad thing for youth, for it keeps them all broke.

In 1932, historian Bernard Sobel recorded interviews with several burlesque stars, including Annie Ashely, who performed at the Bird Cage in 1882. The Bird Cage, which opened just two months after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, was caught up in the feud between the Earps and the Cowboys. In Annie’s words:

Earning money was then exciting, to say the least. Every night the feudists would come to the theatre; sometimes meet each other, and shoot it out then and there. The boxes were built in a ring like a horseshoe, and one gang would sit on one side and the other opposite. Once our blackface comedian, Billy Hart, was on the stage when a cowboy came in and shot the wig off his head, just for devilment.

As soon as trouble started everyone used to drop down and lie flat on his face. Everybody. If we were dancing, and the shooting commenced, the lights would go out, and we’d lie down flat on our stomachs for protection.

As fickle as the barometer was the change in conditions. One morning the feud would be on, then a dead quiet intended to deceive the enemy. Suddenly another feud was on. It was between the famous Earp brothers, who were the marshals, Curly Bill, a Mexican, and Frank Stillwell, a nice quiet man, though an outlaw. One night something serious happened. Morgan Earp was killed while in the Green Chop House by a shot which came in through the window while he was playing billiards. That renewed the battle. For a few hours everything was quiet. An ominous quiet, a silence intended to cheat the enemy into believing that everything was alright again. But the Earp brothers were out to avenge Morgan’s death and the next day sixteen men lay strewn on the sidewalk, sprawled out in their own blood. Dead. Everyone could see them lying right there. Then they got and killed Frank Stillwell and Curly Bill out on a prairie somewhere between Tombstone and Dunning.

While some of Annie’s recollections may be sort of a tall tale, many of the elements she conveyed about working at the Bird Cage resonate with similar accounts.

According to legend, Doc Holliday occasionally dealt faro games at the Bird Cage. One night, Johnny Ringo, who hated Doc with a passion, was passing Doc’s table. When Holliday slurred, “Care to buck the tiger, Johnny? It’s the gustiest game in town.” Ringo wheeled around. He removed his bandana and said to Holliday, “Care to grab to the other end of this bandanna? This is the deadliest game in town!”

Doc Holliday stood and smiled. “Sure Johnny, I’m your huckleberry, and this may be my lucky day.”

In this type of duel, two men grab opposite ends of a bandanna and fire at each other, at point-blank range, generally killing both participants. Ringo also was intoxicated, but fortunately, Curly Bill grabbed Ringo’s arm at the last second and moved him out of the way. Curly Bill yelled, “Hell Doc! He’s drunk!” as both men fired and missed. Holliday, also in a drunken stupor, answered, “Broncos, I drink more by 10:00 a.m. than he can all day.” Holliday then walked off. This handkerchief duel took place in the Bird Cage Theatre, between the faro table and the orchestra pit.

The Bird Cage has many other legends, and one of the most famous is a deadly fight between two soiled doves in 1882. It involved a prostitute called Gold Dollar. She was first known as Little Gertie, but with her petite frame, long golden-blonde hair and rate of a gold dollar as payment for her services, she took on the business name of Gold Dollar. She plied her trade at the Crystal Palace, which was located a block away from the Bird Cage Theatre. Although she was tiny in stature, she was feisty and known to have a mean streak.

Gold Dollar also had a live-in lover, a high-stakes gambler named Billy Milgreen, and she was said to have been very possessive of him and threatened any woman who touched or flirted with him. For the most part, the women of the town were afraid of the petite prostitute and stayed away from Billy.

Eventually, trouble came to town in the form of an attractive prostitute named Margarita. With her creamy bronze skin, this sensual, mysterious woman took a job at the Bird Cage Theatre.

Even though Margarita was aware of Gold Dollar and Billy’s relationship, it didn’t stop her from flirting with him. Gold Dollar threatened to cut out Margarita’s heart if she didn’t back off. Billy, knowing what Gold Dollar was capable of, promised her that he would have nothing to do with the newest employee of the Bird Cage.

One evening, Billy received news that a high-stakes poker game was going to be held at the Bird Cage, and he wanted in. Gold Dollar was working at the Crystal Palace that night and made him promise to stay away from Margarita. Excited about playing the game, he wholeheartedly agreed and ran off to the Bird Cage in the hopes of getting rich.

Some stories say that Gold Dollar didn’t trust Billy to begin with and she went down to the Bird Cage to check things out for herself. Other accounts suggest that someone told her that Margarita was flirting with her man, and she ran down the street to the Bird Cage in a fit of rage. Regardless, she arrived just in time to see Margarita sitting in the gambler’s lap.

She busted through the doors and rushed over to where they were sitting. She grabbed a fistful of Margarita’s hair and pulled her off Billy. Margarita tried to fight back against the angry woman, but she was no match for her enraged temper. Gold Dollar pulled out a four-inch stiletto from her garter and stabbed the other woman in the side. Margarita, mortally wounded, died before a doctor could reach her.

When the sheriff was called, Gold Dollar ran out of the Bird Cage and hid the stiletto outside the building. Margarita’s body was taken away, the blood was cleaned up and the Bird Cage roared on.

No murder charges were brought against Gold Dollar because the murder weapon was never found. The legend says that several months later, Billy Milgreen quietly left Tombstone and was never heard from again. Perhaps he and Gold Dollar got together in some other rip-roaring mining town, their bond sealed in blood, but it’s possible their paths never crossed again.

Surprisingly, a stiletto was found in the 1980s when the privy behind the theater was dug out during construction.

In 1883, Hutchinson sold the Bird Cage to Hugh McCrum and John Stroufe. For the next three years, they put on several variety shows and kept the theater open.

In 1886, Joe Bignon, a variety entrepreneur, bought the theater. He redecorated the building, installed new seats and used his connections in the entertainment business to hire a diverse group of performers. He also renamed it, calling the new enterprise the Elite Theater. He hired magicians, ventriloquists, trapeze acts, high-kicking dancers, even a troop specializing in the circus feat of human pyramids. Joe’s wife was called Big Minnie. A local writer described her as “six feet and 230 pounds of loveliness in pink tights.” Minnie sang, played piano and did ballet skits for the audience. On more than one occasion, she also acted as the theater’s bouncer. A reporter from the Prospector wrote a brief piece for the newspaper that enumerated Minnie’s extra duties:

On May 11, 1889, an intoxicated woodchopper from the Dragoon mountains brandished a pistol when bartender Charley Keen ask him for an additional nickel for his next shot of Mumm’s Extra Dry. Charley looked at the man, and he had his eyes fixed on Charley. At this moment, Mrs. Bignon entered, and Charley asked her to stay there while he went after the sheriff, Bob Hatch, to put the man out. She answered that she would put him out herself, and proceeded to put the objectionable visitor out the front door. However, on the way to jail, he broke free from his captors and began exchanging shots with the officers outside of the Bird Cage. He was quickly subdued a second time and finally incarcerated.

In 1888, travelers to Tombstone reported that the Bird Cage was one of the liveliest attractions they had seen anywhere, and between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., it lived up to its reputation. The place continued to offer the same sensual delights as it did during Billy Hutchinson’s management. It was still almost entirely patronized by men looking for women, gambling and various other entertainment. But under Bignon, the Bird Cage seemed to reach a more feverish frenzy. Sometimes the riotous entertainment erupted almost beyond Bignon’s control. Starved for diversion and clouded by alcohol, the clientele was always on edge. Amid the noise, delirium and nearly nude ladies, passions rose and tempers flared as shots from pistols zipped around the place. Sometimes the fighting would spill out onto the streets in front of the theater. These incidents occasionally made their way into the local paper, often with complaints from the town’s residents: “A disgraceful row between an attorney of this city and a soiled dove occurred at the Bird Cage last evening. Officers flopped the row but did not arrest the offenders. This is not the first time this kind of a disgraceful row has occurred, and our officers should do their duty.”

One of the more unusual acts at the Bird Cage in 1889 was called the human fly. In this performance, women, dressed in theatrical tights and scanty costumes, walked upside down on the ceiling over the stage. It was not an illusion—they actually were suspended above the stage. This type of act gained some notoriety in theaters around the West for a short while. The trick was that their shoes had special clamps on them that fit into holes bored into the ceiling to support them. Unfortunately, one of the performers was killed when one of the clamps slipped and she fell.

Carmelita Gimenes, a well-known singer at the Bird Cage, was living with Frederick Baker, a young actor who had also taken a job at the Bird Cage. The couple was living in an abode adjoining the theater when things began to go sour. During the coroner’s inquest on August 17, 1888, Baker recalled:

All I know, I have been living with her for four or five months. A few nights ago after we got through work at the Bird Cage Theatre, where we are both employed, after the show we came home. After we had retired for the night, she commenced a crying. I asked her the cause of it. She answered it was not concerning me what she was crying about. I asked her if it was about me and she said no, it was something else. I have noticed of late that she was not in her right spirits, rather downhearted and melancholy therefore I did not trouble her no farther [sic] or ask her any questions. I was in the kitchen at the time she took the poison. After rehearsal yesterday I saw her vomit alongside the washstand. I asked her what was the matter with her and asked what was the cause of it. She said she took some medicine to make her sick. I asked what it was and she would not tell me. I thought it was an emetic. I went up town and came back again. It was about 5 o’clock p.m. As I came in I saw an old lady sitting there talking to her, and I saw she was sick and therefore I went in the kitchen. Carmelita followed me in and asked me what I was going to do, and I told her I was going to cook supper, and she said No! I will cook it myself, and I answered No! You are sick, you lay down, and I will cook supper. She said will you cook supper for me too and I said yes. With that, she throwed her arms around my neck and kissed me and then she went into the other room and laid down. I not thinking there was anything the matter with her, started in to cook supper. I did not know nothing more until the children came and then her sister. I did not pay any attention to them at all as they come there pretty near every day. The next thing I know Josephine, her niece, asked me if I knew what was the matter with Carmelita. I said she’s only a little sick. She said No! She has poisoned herself, go and get a doctor. I went out and found Doctor Willis and brought him to her. He asked me on the way what she had poisoned herself with. I told him I did not know. He said, well how do you know she poisoned herself ? I said, her sister told me. That is about all she would tell me what she did use to poison herself.

Dr. Willis gave Carmelita an emetic and discovered that she had taken two teaspoons of Rough on Rats, an arsenic poison. He administered several antidotes to no avail, and Carmelita died at five o’clock the following morning. A short time later, the paper noted that the Elite had closed for the night out of respect for Carmelita, who had finally succeeded in ending her own life.

For the girls of the Bird Cage, the irony of their lives could not have been sharper. Inside the theater, they tantalized and teased, achieving a degree of power and control. Most of them liked to believe that the entertainment aspect of their job was their real profession. But for many, it was not. And outside, they were shunned and alone, broke and sick. But at least the women of the Bird Cage managed to escape the desolation of the cribs on Sixth Street.

Like so many other mining towns, Tombstone eventually began to decline during the early 1890s. Bignon sold the building and closed its doors in the summer of 1892. He also shipped the props and some furnishings to Albuquerque for storage. He eventually returned to Tombstone and, for a time, ran variety performances at the Crystal Palace Saloon, recruiting a few of the Bird Cage old-timers such as singer Ella Ward and comic Jessie Reed. He made a go of it for about two years before he finally gave up and closed it for good in 1899.

The old theater changed hands again in 1900 when it was purchased by Charles L. Cummings, the mayor of Tombstone. He wanted to use the building for storage for all of his treasures that he’d collected in Cochise County.

In 1929, Tombstone held its first Helldorado celebration. The floors of the old theater were cleaned and repaired, and for a short time, it was reopened for the public. When Charles passed away in 1930, his widow, Margaret, was determined to carry out his dream to have his treasures publicly displayed inside the Bird Cage. However, by 1931, the theater was beginning to show its age. The San Bernardino County Sun published an article on September 18 of that year describing a rather unfortunate accident:

The Bird Cage Theatre, where world celebrities entertained when Tombstone was one of the “live spots” in the West during the early mining days, was in wreckage today. An adobe wall crashed down, causing the old theater to crumble in several places.

When the Bird Cage was flourishing Tombstone had a population of 15,000, compared to approximately 500 at present. Residents said the damage will be repaired if possible.

Finally, in 1934, she finished the renovations of the building. The front section was leased out as a coffee shop. In 1946, Margaret sold the theater to Harry and Minnie Ohm, who added restrooms to the building in 1947. Their primary effort was not to restore the theater but to keep it the best preserved original building in Tombstone. After Minnie’s death in 1967, the building passed on to William Hunley.

According to local lore, the first incidents of ghostly activity at the old Bird Cage started in 1921 when the high school was built across the street. As a result, the children who were walking to school began to say that they heard laughter and music coming from the inside of the old building. In fact, many of them were afraid to walk near it.

For the most part, tourists and employees of the Bird Cage report pleasant encounters with the paranormal. However, there was one experience that the owner would like to forget. In the 1980s, owner William Hunley was attending a séance at the Bird Cage. A prominent medium was brought in to assist in contacting the spirits that supposedly inhabited the theater. During this séance, somebody started strangling him, and everybody at the table witnessed it. The commotion caused the medium to break her trance, and finally, the violent act ceased. William had bruises on his neck for six weeks afterward.

William’s son, Bill, has many stories about things suddenly materializing and disappearing. Once, a valuable antique poker chip that had been missing from a gaming table for years inexplicably reappeared in its former place. After finding the chip, Bill Hunley locked it away in a bank vault for safekeeping while he waited for a group of western scholars to authenticate it. When the scholars arrived, Hunley was alarmed to discover the chip had disappeared once again. He frantically searched for it, but the poker chip was nowhere to be found. Later, after the disappointed scholars had left, the poker chip materialized again—this time in a locked drawer of the desk in the Bird Cage Theatre.

Another unusual series of incidents involved a statue of Wyatt Earp that had been placed in one of the cribs that overlook the main room of the Bird Cage. The cribs are sealed off so that no one can disturb the artifacts displayed inside. Over a period of about six months, Earp’s hat was consistently knocked off and thrown out into the middle of the floor below, a distance of about fifteen feet. At one point the statue of Earp was turned completely around so that his face was pointed toward the wall. Confident that the mischief was not being caused by the living, the management was quite baffled by what was going on. Then, Hunley was informed by a local historian that the crib in which Earp’s statue was located was actually the crib that was often rented by the Clantons when they came to the Bird Cage. Billy Clanton, a rival of the Earp brothers, was shot and killed near the O.K. Corral, just down the street from the Bird Cage. After learning this, Hunley had the statue moved to the crib Earp frequented while he was alive. After this, the unusual activity stopped.

The employees of the Bird Cage Theatre have reported a multitude of unusual or bizarre happenings over the years. Quite frequently, the smell of cigar smoke will travel through the building when no one has been smoking. Many people, including tourists, have claimed to have heard the faint sounds of a woman singing to vintage music. There have been many reports of a phantom stagehand who walks across the stage wearing a visor and carrying a clipboard. Many believe that this specter is a former owner or perhaps a stagehand who has chosen to stay.

Many of the employees admit they are afraid to be alone in the theater after sunset because of the extreme amount of ghostly activity. One employee reported that after the Bird Cage had closed for the evening, he turned off the central sound system for the building. He and another employee went down into the basement and went inside one of the bordello rooms, the same place where Wyatt Earp supposedly had an affair with a courtesan named Josephine Marcus. Soon they both heard an unintelligible voice coming out of the sound system, which then began blaring the song “Red River Valley.” The two frightened employees were the only living people inside the building that night. One of them stated later: “You never want to be in here after nine o’clock at night—that’s when stuff really starts happening.”

Employee Bill Clanton, a descendant of O.K. Corral victim Billy Clanton, said he often heard things he couldn’t explain coming from the old 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 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 the attention of one of the theater’s spirits.

“‘I’ll be right down,’ he said to me. He was walking up the stairs to the second floor.” She remembered 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. “Oh yeah, I believe in ghosts.”

Another docent of the Bird Cage, Nova Fleury, described her first sighting of an apparition in the theater.

I saw an apparition of a young woman who opened the curtain; she was between the ages of eighteen and twenty. She was leaning on the balustrade, and when she looked at the balustrade, she seemed to say that the place was unoccupied and there was no one in the alcoves. She was only wearing a bloomer, so she stood out.

Another reoccurring apparition is that of a woman wearing a white dress and a bonnet. She has been seen on the security cameras in the poker room in the basement when no one was in that place at that time. Ruth Larrison, another employee of the theater, described seeing her:

When I went to lock the back doors, I heard a woman, but there was no one. My co-workers were in the office and called to me, as they too had seen this woman on the security monitor. Everyone saw her go downstairs or go down the stairs and go through the door. Then, as we watched, we all saw her again. At first, I thought it was a real person because I did not see through it, she looked like a living person. I cannot say whether she was walking or floating because it was too stealthy. I could see the side of her face.

Another worker at the old theater had this to say about this particular apparition:

Almost everyone who works here has had an experience of some kind with the “Lady in White.” I have seen her. She came down the stairwell and into the poker room. She wore a white dress and a white bonnet. She stood in front of me for a very long time without reacting to my presence at all—it’s like she didn’t even know I was there. She’s what they call a “residual haunt.” No one has ever identified who she is. A bonnet indicates she was a proper lady, and no proper ladies ever came in here. Most of us who work here think she came in with the hearse and is now trapped here.

Dean Dougherty also saw the woman in a white dress in broad daylight. He admitted that he was skeptical the first time he came into the Bird Cage. After the theater had closed, he noticed a woman in a white dress through the window, coming out of the door that leads to the main room. He came back inside and walked to the counter and told her that she should not stay here. The woman then vanished right before his eyes. There is a photograph of a woman in a white dress that goes down the stairs. We think it is the same woman.

The photograph that Dean is speaking of was taken by Donovan’s Ghost Patrol in 2006. This picture was taken from the bottom of the poker room stairs in the back of the theater. Many people claim to see a female figure that has one foot stepping down. She also appears to be holding her dress up as she descends the stairs. If you look carefully off to the side, you’ll see one of the Ghost Patrol’s producers crouched over in the corner. Her name is Michelle, and right before the picture was taken, she yelled that she felt something run by her. Three photographs were taken in sequence, about two seconds apart, and this was photo number two. The third picture was completely normal—nothing unusual was in it. It’s been featured on several of the paranormal and ghost shows, and they keep it in the lobby at the Bird Cage Theatre.

This may also be the ghost that Grant and Jason saw when their sho Ghost Hunters visited the theater a few months afterward. Both of the investigators described seeing a woman, about five feet tall, in a white dress wearing a bonnet. Based on the description of the apparition and the areas where the sightings occur, Carmelita Gimenes is a strong candidate for this specter. This same apparition is responsible for one of the strangest encounters that I have experienced in my thirty-plus years of paranormal investigation.

In 1998, I went to the Bird Cage with another member of the Southwest Ghost Hunters named Tiffany. However, I was not exactly looking for ghosts on this trip. I had recently become interested in using JavaScript and Flash to stitch images together to create a three-dimensional virtual environment on webpages. I really wanted to try this technique at the Bird Cage, so we arrived early to beat the crowd. The JavaScript technique required a considerable number of photographs. Practically every inch of the theater needed to be photographed so that I could connect them together to create the virtual environment. The other challenge is that I did not want anyone in any of the photographs, only the natural environment.

This particular morning, the theater opened with two employees. One watched the front while the other went to the gift store at the rear of the building. We were the first people in that day, and I immediately started the grueling task of taking pictures, starting at the front door and making my way toward the gift shop downstairs.

One hour and several hundred photos later, I was finally on the stage. Tiffany, who had long since become quite bored with the activity, had gone downstairs to the poker room. I was just about to finish up with the last set of photographs for the backstage area when an employee came up the steps. She was a woman in her late twenties, long black hair that was tucked up under a white bonnet. She wore a white blouse that was fastened with a multitude of small white pill-type buttons and a light gray skirt. She smiled at me as I paused and waited for her to pass out of my shot. She immediately went to stage right and descended the steps to the poker room. I took the last set of shots and turned to follow her down. As I started down the stairs, I almost ran into Tiffany, who was walking up.

“Did you ever look under the stage?” she asked. “There are several old beer kegs down there. I wonder if they are the original ones that were used by the bar?”

Tiffany suddenly had a rather strange look on her face. She explained that she had not seen anyone while she was downstairs. She was alone and merely waiting for me to catch up.

Of course, this didn’t make any sense. I had just seen her, and there was no way that Tiffany could have missed her. At first, I thought that she was just joking around, trying to trick me. However, she was quite adamant. The only other person that she saw downstairs was the employee who was behind the cash register in the gift shop.

So we went to the gift shop to ask the employee there if she had seen anyone else come through, since it was the only way out. After receiving yet another quizzical look, I was told that Tiffany and I were the only guests in the theater. No one had exited through the gift shop yet.

Of course, Tiffany took the missed opportunity to poke fun at me. “Cody! I can’t believe you! You had a camera in your hands, and the ghost just walks right on by you!”

I thought it was just another employee. Nothing in her appearance stood out to me that would indicate that she was a ghost. It was another one of those lessons that I learned the hard way.

What’s really unusual about the events taking place here is that they wildly vary in nature.

Teresa Benjamin told me a story about a family of tourists who had marched into the gift shop and complained that they had not seen any ghosts. Disgruntled, they left, calling the place a tourist trap.

However, when they got back home, they called Teresa to apologize. On their videotape, they discovered two frightening specters staring straight into the camera. The family talked to Teresa on the phone for half an hour describing the images. One was of a man sitting inside of the antique hearse that is on display backstage. The other was a woman in one of the bordello rooms, and she was upset at their presence. “They said it was strange,” she recalled, “because they could actually see the expression on her face go from shock to rage instantly.”

Perhaps the most bizarre image was one Teresa witnessed herself while watching the security monitor. In the high-stakes poker room in the basement, she saw a pair of boots and spurs walking down the hallway with absolutely no legs. The boots were walking along by themselves. She thought she just saw things, but when a couple passed through that same room moments later, they asked why that room alone was kept at such a low temperature. “They said it was so cold they couldn’t stand it in there, but that room is the same temperature as the rest of the building.”

Other tourists have had ghostly encounters of their own. Here are a couple of their accounts:

While on vacation to El Paso from San Diego, I convinced the wife and son to stop by the city of Tombstone, Arizona. I had been so excited about this trip because I have wanted to visit Tombstone since I was about ten years old. We stopped by the Birdcage Theatre, which is reported to be haunted; we took the self-guided tour, and it was very creepy because it’s so old. After seeing it on TV and movies, I had to experience it for myself.

Once we got to the backstage area, there were pictures along the wall of an old showgirl or prostitute who used to work there. I was standing next to my wife reading the info on the wall when she decided to walk away without telling me toward a black carriage looking thing to take photos. Just then, I felt a sharp poke on my butt, and I told her to stop playing because it hurt. She yells back at me from across the room and says “what the h*** are you talking about.” When I realized I had been touched, it got absolutely frigid by the photos, and I left the room toward the front lobby. I was scared, but I did finish the tour.

You may have noticed a pattern. Although tourists often go into the Bird Cage in groups, usually only one person experiences something strange. Here is yet another such encounter:

My daughter stood at the doorway just inside the theater, and the color drained from her face. “What’s the matter, Anna? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“I only wish you were wrong, Mom,” she replied. I had never seen her so distraught as she begged for us to leave.

“You can’t be serious, Anna! I just paid full admission for the both of us to come in here, and this was something we both wanted to visit! Look at all this great stuff ! Just think…Doc was here, Wyatt…”

“Mom, I want to go. Now!” Her face spoke of something otherworldly of which only she was aware. It took quite a bit of coercing to convince her it was just her imagination playing tricks and to just forget about it and enjoy the museum. But my efforts only took hold for a minute or two.

As she gazed up into the box seats where ladies had once entertained their paying customers, a look came over Anna’s face I had never seen. In a flash, she fled the Bird Cage without hesitation and didn’t look back.

I followed quickly to catch up, letting the door slam shut behind me and echo into the silent cavern where history seemed caught in a loop. “What the heck is going on?” I demanded to know.

“We were not alone in there, Mom.”

“The caretaker told me we were the first visitors this morning. But even so, it’s a museum, dear. There are going to be other people arriving.”

“No. Not people, Mom. Ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“Yes, Mom…ghosts.” The look on her face told me she was dead serious. My daughter had seen something she couldn’t explain and felt the presence of the ghosts that haunt the Bird Cage.

The Tombstone Epitaph, the local newspaper since 1881, has reported many ghost sightings in the area and at the Bird Cage Theatre. In a recent article, the Epitaph stated that the son-in-law of one of the employees of the Bird Cage became spellbound by the baby coffin that is on display in the theater’s museum. He noticed that the coffin seemed to be vibrating and shot twelve rolls of film of the incident. However, when the film was developed, none of the pictures came out.

If you are looking for ghosts in Tombstone, the Bird Cage should be your first stop.