Hanging knots, ghosts and mini-vans

 

As we crossed the unending top edge of New Mexico, I was thinking about family transportation. Specifically, I was considering the “mini-van” we had rented for our family ski trip to Colorado. Because I had plenty of time to think, I had come full circle in the way I considered this family transportation vehicle. To begin with, whoever named the mini-van did it a great disservice. I’m thinking it was someone with ties to the truck industry. Whoever it was, with that simple name, they probably cut potential sales in half. There is nothing wrong with a van. Shaggy’s van on Scooby Do was rocking. The A-Team traveled in a cool black van with shiny rims. But, unfortunately, no man is ever going to buy anything with the word “mini” in front of it. 

This was my progression of thoughts as we went from Shreveport to Dallas, then Amarillo, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Denver. What was I doing in a stinking mini-van? I huddled behind the wheel. I drove meekly, avoiding eye contact with my fellow drivers. I even used my turn signals well in advance, for crying out loud.

Then, on the return leg, I suddenly began to see my van another way.  Somewhere along the Raton Pass, I was sold. Other than the name, what is not to like about the mini-van concept? There are video screens. Comfortable seating. Ample room, as evidenced by the fact that we were carrying enough gear for a polar expedition. Multiple doors. All kinds of gadgets and buttons. And I didn’t try it, but I’m betting I could have stashed a case of beer in the countless cup holders scattered throughout the interior. So why did they call it a mini-van? Had they simply named it a “Man Cave Mobile”, then there is no telling where the automotive industry could have gone with this vehicular concept.  Imagine a pack of guys headed out to tailgate before an NFL game? No one is going to say, “Ted, can we take your mini-van?” But, who could argue with such a group traveling in the “Man Cave on Wheels?”

The automotive industry clearly realized their mistake with the mini-van’s moniker and came out with what they called a sleeker, sportier alternative. They named it the Crossover SUV. Or, as I now call them, the cross dressing mini-van. Better yet, fifty miles outside of Raton, I was already thinking of my minivan as a crossover wearing a condom.

Perhaps this is proof enough that my thoughts themselves were random and road weary as we negotiated the darkened, rural byways of New Mexico.

The decision to stop for the night was random. Perhaps my wife suggested it after I explained my minivan/condom/man cave concept, but the idea to call it a day seemed like a good one. The sign for the hotel was nice. It was an old, historic brick building in the one street town. A saloon/restaurant sat on the street level below two floors of rooms for rent.

I parked, told the family to hold tight, and went in. The lobby was slightly dated, but beautiful, with lots of wood and some hokey pictures.  The windows were stained with dust blown off the plains. I could practically picture a hero from a Louie Lamour western standing in that very place, surveying that very street, save the gaudily lit sign advertising a 7:40 showing of The Hobbit.

The woman at the front desk had already scanned my card when I saw the hanging display. I mean, it was hanging on the wall, and it was a display about a 1901 hanging right outside the hotel.

It turned out that “Black Jack” Thomas Edward Ketchum robbed the wrong train.

According to the legend, maybe someone didn’t know how to tie the knot, or they could have greased the rope too much, or perhaps he was dropped from too high a perch. Whatever the cause, when “Black Jack” went to swing, his head became separated from his torso, an occurrence spelled out in graphic and pictorial detail right there in the lobby, both on the walls, and in pamphlets you could take if you wished to visit the locations made famous by the decapitation/hanging. As I read on, fascinated, nothing much was said about the head. (Well, it was sown back on for the burial.) But, for some reason, the officials at the botched hanging lurked around the headless body, waiting as it shuddered for six long minutes in the dusty road before the heart gave out and “Black Jack” was declared dead.  

By the time the night clerk passed over my two metal keys, I had determined the kids did not need to spend a lot of time exploring the lobby. Not a problem. We were going to clean up, hit the saloon for grub, then go straight to bed. 

Our rooms were on the third floor.

We had 307. 308 was unoccupied. Our other room was 301, only one door down since the rooms were arranged in a circle around the staircase. When we came out of that room to walk down to dinner, we discovered that 306 had also been rented.

One look at their gear through the open bedroom door and I knew who they were.

Ghost-chasers. 

There were four of them. The two most enthusiastic guys were geared to the nines, clanking as they walked and gestured about their intentions to capture proof of a spiritual disturbance. The camera one of them wore was understandable enough. If the ghost made an appearance then it would be good to capture an image. The rest of their gear left me scratching my head. There was the long silver wand plugged into a box worn on one chaser’s hip. A microphone maybe? Or one of those snake cameras to be employed when locked doors get in the way? There was the large black and white screen, divided into ten or twelve sub-screens propped up on their hotel bed. And then wires and junk everywhere. This set up wasn’t exactly Star Trek. Think Ignatius J. Reilly with the leftovers from a 1979 yard sale. There was also a woman. She had this half smile on her face the whole time. I would like to think it was a sheepish expression at being discovered among such company; more likely she was stoned. Then there was the old man, who apparently planned to sleep through the ghost encounter in a chair at the end of the hall.

As we came to learn from the ghost chasers and later through more investigation on the World Wide Web, one of our rooms, 307, was haunted. To my surprise, the ghost was not a headless “Black Jack”. It was a woman named Irene, who supposedly hung herself in 307 after losing her child. Upon hearing this, my oldest son, forever pragmatic, gestured at the smooth ceiling. “What did she hang herself from?”

Things were already creepy enough and in order to give the scenario as little credibility as possible, I didn’t point out that sheet rock wasn’t around when Irene stepped off her chair.

To our knowledge, this was our family’s first haunted hotel room.

At first, the kids were all about it. They talked about Irene throughout our frontier meal. After dinner, the ghost chasers interviewed the kids about staying in the famous room 307. They even went so far as to suggest that my children report any strange sounds they heard during the night. Then one of my twins interviewed them about being ghost chasers.

Unfortunately, over the course of a few hours, the new car smell of the ghost business began to wear off. 

“How come one of those ghost-busting dudes don’t have no teeth?” one of the twins asked when my whole family was crammed into the non-haunted hotel room.

My wife and I exchanged a glance, too preoccupied with the answer to chide him for the question’s incorrect grammar.

“Well?” he asked.

“Bad dentist?” I finally offered.

“Or a healthy meth problem,” my oldest son tossed in.

This prompted a litany of inquiries about crystal meth as I tried to keep my mob quiet. The ghost chasers had something that might be a long range microphone. What if that gear was pointed at the door to the room we were in? What was worse, what would happen when we got in the room they were studying? The haunted room. 307. What if they had their listening devices pointed at that room and I passed gas during the night? Would it be saved for all of posterity? Would the ghost chasers think it was Irene, or realize the chili fries simply didn’t agree with me?

One by one, all save my oldest child, the kids abandoned ship on the prospect of sleeping in 307. Leaving wasn’t much of an option, either. I was bushed, and who knew if there was another hotel room in that little town at that time of night.

I stepped into the hallway, headed for 307. The chasers were waiting, gear at the ready. I opened the door to my room, then stood back to let them see. No ghost. Just two over-packed, pregnant looking suitcases. Without a word, I carried the suitcases to our other room. Then I returned to the head ghost chaser and held out the key.

“Go get her,” I said, dropping it in his palm. “No way my kids are sleeping in there after all this.”

I slept in a chair inside the door to our non-haunted room. Like Irene, I was concerned about the welfare of my children and things that could go bump in the night. Not that anything did. Some hallway giggles would have helped ease the tension. Instead, the chasers were deathly quiet. The only noises that betrayed their presence were the occasional creaks from the floor as they moved about, or the slightest whispers to reposition the camera. (Lord only knows what they were doing with that wand.) My family of six slept on a king sized bed and a pull out couch. I didn’t claim my spot on the couch until sometime after 4 a.m.   

The next morning, on our way out, I tried the door to 307. Locked, the key, and at least one of the ghost chasers, probably sleeping inside.

“Sleeping with Irene?” a twin asked as we tiptoed down the stairs.

My wife was livid, wanting me to complain, demanding we get a refund instead of sneaking out like we were somehow in the wrong.

I was already back in mileage mode. Arguments and demands took precious time and we had to make Dallas before dark. The clerk who checked me out asked for the key to 307. I told him the key was in the room, which wasn’t a lie. I eventually called from the road. After explaining the ghost hunters, the clerk could not have been nicer. He apologized and refunded me the price of 307. He told me the ghost hunters who visited the hotel were a nuisance and they tried to avoid them. I doubted that to be the truth, since one of the hunters had been wearing a shirt that said “I break for Casper” and the whole crew had enough dated electronic gear among them to send the original capsule to the moon.

Still, I found myself melancholy and sleepy as we barreled toward Amarillo. That hotel had tried to do it right. There had been a costly renovation. There was a reasonably good restaurant. But somewhere, somehow, something had gone wrong.

Their dusty old town was full of American history, but no one was there to see it, and I’m not sure anyone ever would. The old hotel was not unlike “Black Jack”, whose headless corpse shuddered in the New Mexico dust while everyone waited. And I got the sad feeling that Irene’s restless spirit would not be able to carry the day. I feared that for this particular hotel, and maybe the town at large, their six minutes were almost up.