Ghosts of Goldfield and Tonopah Page 9

  Virgil Earp Has Followed the Trail Across the Great Divide

  A noted frontier character crossed the Great Divide yesterday in the person of Virgil Earp. In the early days of Tombstone, Ariz. from 1879 to 1882 when the camp vied with Leadville in being the toughest camp on earth, the Earp boys, consisting of Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil, Warren, James and one other the writer cannot now recall, were among the best men in America. All of them would fight at the drop of a hat—and two of their number, Morgan and Warren[,] were killed in personal altercations. Wyatt, who was afterward marshal of Tombstone and one of the pioneers of Nome, Alaska[,] is residing now in Searchlight, and James lives in Sawtelle near the Old Soldiers’ Home in Los Angeles County California. The father of “the boys” as they have always been called, a veteran of the Civil War, lives at the soldiers’ home and is enjoying a ripe old ages [sic]. During one of the scrimmages of the Earp boys in the Tombstone days[,] the Lowery brothers and Billy Clanton were killed. For more than a year past[,] the deceased Virgil Earp, a quiet unassuming man, has been engaged as a special officer at the National Club in Goldfield.

  He endeared himself to all who knew and left behind a host of friends, and Charles B. Stocking, an oldtimer [sic] in Arizona who knew him well gives him a very high character. The deceased was ill only a short time with pneumonia and died at the age of sixty-two years, after having led a more exciting life than comes to the average man.

  The Nevada State Journal carried a different obituary in its October 25, 1905 issue:

  Virgil Earp, Gunfighter, Cashes In

  Considering the general reputation of new mining camps, it speaks well of Goldfield that Mr. Earp was permitted to go hence with his boots off…

  By all means, you should visit the Goldfield Cemetery next time you’re in town. But don’t waste your time looking for Virgil Earp’s grave site. He’s not there. His only daughter had his body sent to Oregon, where she lived. Virgil Earp is buried at the Riverview Cemetery in Portland, Oregon.

  While there have been no reported (or admitted) sightings of the ghostly Virgil Earp, there is the sound of boots shuffling along near the site of the old Northern Saloon. And there’s the eerie incessant cough that drifts in on certain nights at the site of the old hospital where Virgil Earp breathed his last. Another theory I would like to put forward is this: on the night that I investigated the Goldfield Hotel with Helmey Kramer, Jen Peterson, Richard St. Clair and Cimarron Sam, many strange things happened. The sound of boots walking toward us and suddenly stopping as if face to face with us was among the weirdest. Although the hotel wasn’t built until three years after Virgil Earp died, who is to say this wasn’t Deputy Earp checking up on what was going on in the hotel?

  THE JOHN S. COOK BANK BUILDING

  The John S. Cook Bank building was constructed in 1907 by Loren B. Curtis and Marvin E. Ish. For the next twenty years, the bank would be Goldfield’s financial hub. When the $30,000 purse was finally agreed upon between boxer Joe Gans’s management and that of his opponent Nelson, all the money was displayed here in a neat stack of gold coins. Money, money, money—even if there are no ghosts in the building, think of the cash that’s spent some time here.

  A mannequin in the John S. Cook Bank building during a night investigation. Photo by Bill Oberding.

  Several years ago, I was involved in a ghost investigation in which I was given the opportunity to investigate the John S. Cook Bank building with a group of ghost investigators. It was well past midnight as we eagerly made our way from the Goldfield Hotel to the bank building, a few blocks away. But on this midwinter night, it seemed like miles. Thousands of stars were shimmering overhead, and the temperature was barely above freezing. Columbia Street was a sheet of ice.

  It was dark inside the bank building. In the shadows, the antique items took on an eerie appearance. On the walls were photos of George Wingfield and other long dead but very famous Nevadans. We broke into two smaller teams. While one group went into the small room to do an EVP session, the other stayed behind in the main room, quietly filming.

  During ghost investigations, there is always a sense that we, the living, are the intruders. This night was no different. This building seemed to be of the past, and it felt like we didn’t belong here. Suddenly, someone in the group brushed past me in the darkness and angrily stomped upstairs.

  When the investigation concluded, I asked, “Everyone ready to go?”

  “No!” someone shouted from upstairs.

  “It’s time to go,” I replied. From upstairs came only silence.

  Someone in the group ran upstairs to hurry the straggler along. A moment later, he came downstairs and announced, “There’s no one up there.”

  Then who ran past me and stomped up those stairs? Who answered me when I asked if we were ready? There was no time to answer those questions.

  On a subsequent investigation in the building, a participant was forcefully pushed on the stairs. According to Goldfield lore, the infamous Barbara Graham had an office in an upstairs room of the building back in the late 1940s or early ’50s. In 1955, thirty-two-year-old Graham was executed at San Quentin for the 1953 murder of an elderly woman in Glendale.

  Dubbed Bloody Babs by the news media, Graham worked as a waitress and a nurse’s aide in Tonopah during the late 1940s or early ’50s. But did she have a Goldfield connection? What was it? And why would she have an office? She was not a secretary, professional or mine owner. However, the attractive woman had served time for prostitution in California. It was how she typically made her living. Perhaps the phrase “had an office” has been passed down as some sort of euphemism for prostitution.

  Whoever pushed the woman on the stairs of the John S. Cook Bank building was not the kindest of spirits. We may never know if it was the ghostly Barbara Graham or another spirit.

  There is some wonderful news for ghost hunters concerning the John S. Cook Bank building. The building has recently been acquired by Elite Vegas Paranormal Society Inc. The plans are to permit group tours, ghost investigations and research. The building will be brought to a state of arrested decay. And this brings me to my next point.

  I recently read an article with a stated premise that ghosts are bad for old buildings. In other words, once ghost hunters get wind of a place being haunted, they storm in and destroy it. This could not be further from the truth. As an example, I refer you back to the Elite Vegas Paranormal Society’s acquisition of the John S. Cook Bank building, and the group’s plans for the historic old building. Most ghost hunters are historians (to one degree or another), and they are also preservationists (to one degree or another.) They cherish the past, for this is from where ghosts emerge. It is partly because of (and not in spite of) ghost hunting and ghost hunters that interest is being renewed in old buildings across the nation. This helps to bring much-needed funds for restoration and preservation.

  THE GOLDFIELD CEMETERY

  The Goldfield Cemetery is a short distance from town, just across Highway 95. It is one of the few cemeteries in the country that offers free plots to the local population. That’s right. Goldfield’s residents are assured a rent-free piece of desert in which to spend eternity. However, the town does not pick up the entire tab. The occupant’s estate must pay the cost of digging the grave.

  Goldfield Cemetery Sign. Photo by Bill Oberding.

  Goldfield Cemetery. Photo by Anne Leong.

  The cemetery was moved when the railroad came to town in 1906. Goldfield’s movers and shakers didn’t want someone stepping off the train to be put off by the proximity of the depot to the town’s cemetery, and so those resting in peace were dug up and relocated to new graves at the present location. The men who did the task were dubbed “ghouls.” Not wishing to give offense to the living, these men worked by night while most of Goldfield slept. There was enough going on in town without residents having to witness such gruesome work.

  Goldfield Cemetery is not a fancy cemetery. There aren’t many elegant marble headstones, carved
angels or towering obelisks honoring the dead who rest here. Simple wooden crosses and markers suffice and dot the cemetery. Unlike some earlier boom camp cemeteries, the Goldfield Cemetery is an equal opportunity cemetery. Sinners and saints lie side by side.

  Some of the people who came to Goldfield only meant to stay awhile, but fate stepped in and here they remain. If not for one man’s efforts, many of them would be long forgotten. Bryan Smalley is a man with a mission. The retired Esmeralda County deputy sheriff owns and operates Hidden Treasures Shop in Goldfield. In addition to dispensing tales of local history to tourists who wander into his eclectic shop of used goodies, Bryan keeps busy with his woodcarving, building and headstones. Smalley has taken it upon himself to ensure that those who lie forgotten in unmarked graves at the Goldfield Cemetery have some remembrance of their time here on earth, whether a wooden cross or a wooden headstone. Armed with what information he can glean from old records, he goes to work.

  The unknown man was one of the first residents of Goldfield Cemetery to have received a headstone from Bryan Smalley. No one ever knew who he was or why he came to Goldfield. In the days before fingerprinting, driver’s licenses, social security cards, credit cards and other means of identification, it was easy to remain anonymous, and if you died alone without friends or family, anonymity was assured. How the unknown man met his death, however, is no mystery.

  On a hot July afternoon in 1908, an elderly man ate library paste and died as a result. Was he so hungry that he hoped to fill an empty belly? Did he realize that the paste was deadly? If so, why did he want to die? Was he suffering from some ailment that drove him to consume the poisonous paste? We will never know the answers to these questions.

  And so he is spending eternity under the shadow of Malapai Mesa, his identity unknown and his secrets safe.

  MARTIN ROWHER

  Summers in Central Nevada can be hellishly hot. So it was on July 17, 1908, a day that found Martin Rowher (also sometimes spelled “Rohwer”) hungry and trying to find a way out of Nevada. Times were tough. Without two nickels to rub together, he didn’t see a way out of his poverty. It hardly seemed fair for him to be so down on his luck, with all the money changing hands in this town. He didn’t want all of it, just enough to buy himself a decent meal and a fast way out of Nevada. There was nothing here for the Spanish-American War veteran. He had lived in Nevada long enough to realize this wasn’t where he wanted to be. But for now his stomach growled, reminding him of just how long ago his last meal had been. He was hungry, and a hungry man will do a lot of things he wouldn’t ordinarily do.

  Unlike Martin Rowher, high graders, who were robbing the mine owners, weren’t going without. They knew how to profit at the mine owners’ expense, a fact that infuriated the owners who were being cheated out of gold that was rightfully theirs. The losses were staggering. Special security officers were hired to keep watch on the mines and quell some of the thefts. It was one of these officers that Martin Rohwer met that night in July as he crawled out of a mine shaft with nearly twenty-five pounds of gold ore.

  Rohwer didn’t try to explain. He was shot twice as he tried to flee. In a dying statement, he explained his reasons for resorting to thievery and absolved the officer of any wrongdoing in his shooting. “It was all my fault,” Rohwer admitted. “I had to have the money.”

  Now he would never leave Nevada. An old Goldfield tale has it that Rohwer is one of the ghosts who roam the cemetery when the rest of the world is sleeping.

  LITTLE JOY FLEMING

  Her headstone reads simply Joy, and this is her story.

  Joy’s family came to Goldfield in 1906 with big dreams and little money. Someday they would live in a fine house, wear nothing but the most elegant of clothing and always have plenty of food on the table. These are the things Herbert and Anne Ellis promised themselves, their son and Anne’s two daughters.

  Like thousands of others, they dreamed of striking it rich in nearby gold mines and of living happily ever after. Sadly, their dreams were not to be realized in Goldfield. Within a year of their arrival, both the Ellis daughters fell ill. Ten-year-old Joy was the worst off.

  Little Joy’s grave at the Goldfield Cemetery. Photo by Bill Oberding.

  The doctor found the little girl suffering from diphtheria. Living conditions in camp were unsanitary squalor, and diseases were rampant. “All we can do is wait and see,” the doctor told the worried mother.

  And so, hoping for a miracle, they waited. But Joy only got worse. She died one summer afternoon as the sun bore down on the Malapai Mesa. Early the next morning, she was buried. Afterward, her parents went back to their cabin, the thought of their eldest daughter lying in a cold and unmarked grave weighing heavily on their hearts. But headstones were costly. They barely had enough money to put food on the table. A headstone was an impossibility.

  That night, Joy’s mother cried herself to sleep. Tossing and turning, she suddenly woke with an idea. One of the large white stones being used for the stairs of the new Sundog School would make a headstone. She could chisel Joy’s name on it.

  Most of Goldfield was still asleep. If she were going to put her plan into action, she would have to act fast. She waited until after midnight before crawling out of bed. Her husband was sleeping soundly; there was no need to disturb him. She silently crept out of the cabin, and pulling an old toy wagon behind her, she headed for the Sundog School. The streets were still dark and silent. No one would see her as she loaded the heavy stone block into the wagon and started for the cemetery. Once there, she placed the block on Joy’s grave and spent the rest of the night chiseling the simple message “Joy” onto the stone.

  When morning came, little Joy was no longer resting in an unmarked grave. The family didn’t stay in Goldfield where they had found only heartache. Within the month, they moved on to Bonanza, Colorado.

  Later in her life, Joy’s mother, Anne Ellis, was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Colorado in 1938 after writing three remarkable books. In The Life of an Ordinary Woman, she tells about mining camp life, the family’s struggles in Goldfield and the death of her daughter Joy. Plain Anne Ellis picks up where the first book leaves off. In Sunshine Preferred, published four years before her death, Ellis, older, alone and facing severe asthma, wrote of her life, her activism for women’s rights and of her three terms as the elected treasurer of Saguache County, Colorado. She died in Denver at age sixty-three in 1938.

  No doubt, Ellis’s books are the reason Joy’s grave has been visited by people from all over the world. Many still stop and place flowers on the little girl’s grave. In the early 1960s, a tourist happened to stop in the cemetery at dusk. No one else was about, so he waved his flashlight across the sagebrush-strewn grounds, focusing on Joy’s grave. Suddenly, a child went scampering off, as if she had been frightened by the light. He may have encountered the ghost of little Joy Fleming. She’s certainly been seen in the cemetery over the years.

  Those who’ve investigated in this cemetery claim Joy is not the only ghost who wanders here. The other ghost, however, is not so easily frightened. A new team who ventured in one full-moon night came away swearing never to return.

  “You don’t belong here. Get out!” a disembodied voice growled at them. Anxious to get some EVP, they turned their recorders on and asked the ghost to tell them his or her name. Not one word or sound was recorded. The team got nothing for their troubles except for flat tires on every one of their vehicles. Was it coincidence, a prank-playing local who didn’t want anyone in the cemetery or…

  By the 1980s, little Joy’s headstone had stood there in the desert cemetery for over seventy years. State employees replaced it with a new stone, and this probably makes little Joy very happy.

  THE MURDER OF COUNT CONSTANTIN PODHORSKI

  Occasionally Bryan Smalley meets a grateful distant relative of someone he has memorialized with a simple headstone or cross in the Goldfield Cemetery. Such is the case of Count (Konstanty Maciej) Constantin Podhor
ski.

  Count Podhorski was born in Mikolajowka in the tsarist province of Kiev in 1859. The son of a Russian princess and a Polish count, he held the title kniaz (which roughly translates to duke or prince.) After serving in the Russian Imperial Army, Podhorski, who was fluent in six languages, traveled the world. Among his friends were the famous, the wealthy and the politically influential.

  In 1896, gold was discovered in the Yukon. When news reached the United States, thousands of men headed north to Alaska in what would later be known as the Klondike Stampede. Five years later, Count Podhorski was living in Nome when a friend introduced him to John Rosene, owner of the largest shipping and fishing business in the Pacific Northwest.

  A shrewd businessman, Rosene realized that an excellent business opportunity existed on the Siberian coast if he could persuade the Russians to agree to a trade agreement. Podhorski set to work writing friends and acquaintances in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Rosene’s behest. Within a few months, he received a telegram asking him to bring Rosene to St. Petersburg to further discuss his proposition.

  The two men set off for St. Petersburg from Seattle and arrived in the middle of December 1901. Podhorski was called on to use all his powers of persuasion against a strong anti-American sentiment.

  “The spirits there were against Americans,” he would later write.

  The Russians did not like American gold seekers crossing the Bering Strait to the Chucki Peninsula in their quest for gold. But they could hardly deny the weight of Podhorski’s argument. Rosene was awarded his concession on the Chucki Peninsula.

  During a social event, Podhorski was introduced to Jack Hines, known as the Merry Minstrel of Nome. With Hines was his wife, Edith. The count kissed her hand in the European fashion and lifted his eyes to meet those of the much younger woman. He was entranced. It mattered little that the pretty woman was married to another man. He meant to have her one way or the other. With his good looks, the suave, sophisticated count easily captured the hearts of women wherever he went. Edith was no exception. She would easily be just one more conquest.