Jerome

I hadn't heard of it before our trip, but it seems that little ol' Jerome, AZ is popping up everywhere these days.  This former mining town is now known for being a super-haunted spot and is an easy drive from Scottsdale.  If you don't mind bright-red fonts and groovy background music, you can read more about Jerome here. 

The town is nestled like this, and you can see what is now the Grand Hotel (the big yellow-ish building at center-left) in this shot.  This used to be the hospital, where they couldn't contain all the bodies as people were dying from the Spanish flu.  We had lunch there and the creepy vibe could not be denied.  I was scared being in the bathroom alone.  *shudder*

Then we went to a rock shop nearby and the woman told us all about the ghostly experiences she'd had in Jerome.  Stuff like seeing demons in human form (or half-ass demonic attempts to pass as human), crossing spirits through to the other side, and a banana-curled lady spirit (picture Nellie Oleson) with an ire for men.  She kept going on and M and I were rapt (B was polite enough to stand there without pshaw-ing)... until she described WWII as "the war with the Jews" and later asked us to watch a YouTube movie that sounded like some New World Order shit.  Hmmm.  This should have discredited her accounts of spirits strangling her in the night, but it was too late.  She'd already scared the bejesus outta me and M.  It was a lights-on night back at the Valley Ho.



But anyway, here's a shot looking down on part of the city from the Grand Hotel.

We walked around Jerome a bit, trying to dispel our heebie-jeebies.  On our way out, we drove through the city center to the abandoned mine and the ghost town (not in a supernatural way, this time) next to it.  If you like busted out shit and rotting evidence of previous human settlement, then this is your spot.  Here are some photos:

And here I tried to capture the magical glow of the rocks in the distance.  But much like the big, bright stars that come out over the desert, it can really only be experienced in person.