When there’s a dirty job to do, I do my best to get out of it, and if I simply can’t shirk it, I do it grudgingly.
I grudgingly tooled up Miner Street and parked in front of the Underhill Museum and Book Store. In the noon light it didn’t look too dangerous – high windows at street level and sun-washed brick and mortar laid in the ornate style that masons haven’t employed for the better part of a century. Sighing deeply, I got out of the car and walked up to the door. It was closed. The spirits had smiled upon me. I took an unremarkable picture of the façade and, since I was already pointed in that direction, continued over I-70 onto Highway 103. Less than two minutes later I was standing among the mute and mossy monuments of the Idaho Springs Cemetery.
It was peaceful there, which is not uncommon for such hallowed precincts, and it was quite deserted. No voices, no chapeaued gentlemen, nothing but quiet stones and gently waving grass. Perhaps my little photo-safari wouldn’t be so troublesome after all, I thought. I am perfectly capable of enduring inconvenience, so long as doing so isn’t difficult or unpleasant. I took a few snaps and headed back across the bridge to the Argo.
“Ghost hunters come through here all the time, and we’ve had people on the tour – mostly kids – get really scared and see shadows and think they’re ghosts,” admitted Jim Maxwell, master and chief guide of Idaho Springs’ looming centerpiece, the Argo Mill. “I just ignore all that.”
Ignoring all that is what I do best. I took a couple of ignorable photographs and moved on to the Indian Springs Lodge. At noon on an autumn weekday, the place was bustling with bathers lining up for a shot at steamy, mineral-rich relief in the century-old spa’s storied baths. Jessa Logan was busy in her office, just off the lobby.
“Is this place really haunted?”
“I’ve never witnessed it myself,” Logan began, “but some people say an old gentleman sometimes appears sitting alone in Bath No. 4.”
While I understand the impulse, I’m afraid the “old gentleman” may be expecting more curative vigor than even Indian Springs’ potent waters can deliver.
“And Room No. 205 is supposed to be haunted. Some people say they’ve seen a woman wearing Victorian clothes walking down that hallway.”
“Some people” were beginning to make me feel uncomfortable, and is this office getting smaller? I excused myself, snapped an apparition-free shot of Room No. 205, and steeled myself for the main event.
The Phoenix Gold Mine rests snug and isolated in a tight canyon just west of town. Climbing the two miles up Trail Creek Road felt like free-falling out of the safe and civilized and into the mysterious and, possibly, sinister.
“Is the Phoenix actually haunted?” I asked Bob, who, like Cher, Enya, Tiffany and Charo, embraces a succinctness of self-identification.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” said Bob. “We’ve had National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and a bunch of other folks up here looking for ghosts, and they all found ‘em, too.”
“Ever seen one yourself?”
“Just one time. It was the end of the day and I saw the silhouette of a man pass in front of the light coming in at the end of the tunnel. Nobody was supposed to be in there, so I figured he was up to no good. He passed by real close, so I quick jumped to the side and swung a punch where I knew he had to be. But all I hit was solid rock. Hurt like heck, too. But you should take the tour and see for yourself.”
That sounded like entirely too much not sitting down to suit my taste, and I was about to make my apologies when I saw the boy. Tommy Lowry, 13, was visiting from Illinois with the parents and grands, and the whole troop was putting on hardhats for their guided trip into the heart of darkness.
“They say this mine is haunted,” I told Tommy. “What do you think about that?”
For the record, that’s a journalistically legitimate question, and not merely a cruel attempt to needlessly frighten a child who’s done me no wrong.
“I think it’s a bunch of baloney,” Tommy said, nonchalantly. “It’s just a hole in the ground.”
Hmmm…I may be lazy, but I’m also vain, petty and insecure, and I wasn’t about to let a kid I don’t know show me up in front of grown-ups I don’t know.
“Okay, Bob. Let’s do this.”
Outside, the Phoenix is rustic and charming and kissed by gentle breezes. Inside, it’s dim and close and looks like a poor man’s tomb and smells like cold earth and sounds like secrets you’d rather not know. I trailed after the boy and his crew for perhaps a hundred steps before realizing that I was above Tommy’s brand of childish antagonism, and that the best thing I could do was set the lad a good example of mature male behavior by removing myself from the pointless competition at once. I don’t mind saying that I felt a touch of smug self-satisfaction as I raced back into the sunlight and hunched in the parking lot clutching my chest and gasping for air. It feels good to do the right thing.
At home a half-hour later, snug in my footie-pajamas and comfortably reclined, I congratulated myself on a job well done. In nearly three wearying hours of sitting and standing, I’d uncovered lots of non-verifiable evidence for the existence of ghosts without being made to suffer the awkwardness and distress of actually meeting one. Ghost hunting, it turns out, is a business nicely suited to my sedate and sedentary nature, and I’ll be sure to mention that the next time I run into a certain type of dewy-eyed young lady.
“Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.” Arthur C. Clarke, from “2001: A Space Odyssey”