Jeffery W. McKelroy

by Jeffery W. McKelroy

• Ghost Stories
• Spirit Photography

Heading west on I-40, leaving Ft. Sill, 8 hours on the road leads to Madrid, New Mexico, situated on the northeast side of the Sandia Mountains. With only four hundred residents the town is classified as a ghost town. Although it does not look like this town is destined to die just yet. It’s a quirky community of artists and hippies who have a lot of love for their high desert home and seem to have rescued it from fading away. It wasn’t always a happy home for peace loving hippies though. Like most Old West towns, this one has a past.

Over 1,500 years ago Native Americans had already settled on the site of what would one day be Madrid and were actively mining turquoise and lead. The great Galisteo Basin has been inhabited for thousands of years by native hunter and gatherer peoples who thrived on the plentiful elk, mammoths, sloth and bison. Over six hundred years ago the Keres and Tano Indians lived in small tightly knit agricultural communities and constructed impressive pueblos. Some of the villages were as small as a few dozen and others as large as thousands, in terms of population. Today archeologists are still finding the evidence of these original settlers in the area in the form of stone tools, bits of pottery and cave art, not to mention the pueblo known as Burnt Corn just five miles east of the now ghost town of Cerrillos. The Spanish arrived in 1540 but were not interested in turquoise and lead and so continued on, leaving the Natives unmolested. One hundred years later the Spanish returned and this time they found silver.

 They brutally forced the Indians into service, working in the mines. Eventually the natives revolted in 1680 and were successful in driving the Spanish from their lands, but 13 years later the Spanish came again and conquered the area. The Spanish continued to search the area for gold and established several farms and ranches, but the settlement remained sparsely populated until large amounts of coal were discovered by Americans in 1835. Shortly after the discovery of coal, gold was finally found, and the town finally began to grow.

Madrid was formally founded in 1869 and by the 1880’s the Santa Fe Railroad had arrived. With the arrival of the railroad coal mining expanded but by this time all of the gold had played out and large companies had moved in to take over the large scale coal mining operations. The rich coal mines upon which Madrid sat upon, covered some 30 square miles, connected by a network of tunnels that made up the Lucas & White Ash, the Peacock, and the Cooke mines. During this time over 3,000 people lived and worked in Madrid, making it larger than Albuquerque in population.

By 1906 the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Company had consolidated all coal production in the area at Madrid. The coal company provided the housing, the 160,000 gallons of water per day and provided medical care to the employees of the company. Madrid was a true company town.

Of course, there were also the saloons and bawdy houses with plenty of gambling and entertainment. It was a wild and wide-open lawless town. It was the true epitome of the old west with gun fights, knife fights and plenty of prostitution. The people there worked hard and played even harder. Gun fights in the streets and in the saloons were not uncommon as there was little law in the town.

Conditions in the mine were brutal. Death was a constant possibility and an almost daily occurrence. It wasn’t a matter of if, but rather when. Most of the miners expected to meet their end at some point and just made peace with the idea. The owners of the mine had little concern for those that they employed. They saw them as easily replaceable and production numbers were their only concern. In 1919 the mine got a new superintendent, Oscar Huber, who greatly improved the conditions of the mine and the town. Huber directed the construction of paved streets, a hospital, installation of electric lights, as well as a school and a company store.

The years in which Huber controlled the mine were the boom years. During prohibition the mine provided a place for the miners to operate an illegal still and they even had their own baseball team that played on the only illuminated field west of the Mississippi River. The production of the mine peaked in 1928. The owner of the mine was killed in an accident at the mine in 1936 and controlling interest passed to Huber. By 1947 Huber owned the entire town and the surrounding coal lands.

 The boom was not to last. Eventually natural gas would replace coal as the preferred fuel for providing home heating and by the 1950s the coal market had collapsed. In 1954, the Albuquerque and Cerillos Coal Company stopped all operations and closed its doors. The entire reason for the town of Madrid to be there was now gone. Most of the residents packed up and moved away, leaving Madrid to become a ghost town. The entire town was listed for sale for $250,000. There were no buyers.

In the late 1970’s as crime began to skyrocket in San Francisco, much of the counterculture movement started moving to ghost towns throughout the west looking for cheaper and more peaceful places to live. Some settled in towns near the city such as Petaluma, or Sebastopol, California and some found Madrid. Oscar Huber’s son, Joe, who at that time owned the entire town started renting or selling the old company owned houses to the flood of artists, sculptors, and musicians searching for a new life. The town of Madrid was reborn and what had once been a wild mining town was now a hippie haven.

Today the town is a tourist stop on the way out west. Travelers stop to take a break and browse the many shops, enjoy a meal at the small cafes and even stay for a night at one of the several bed and breakfasts. The original pine and oak bar from the first Mineshaft Tavern inhabits the building built to replace it when the original burned down in the 1940’s. Most of the town has been restored and preserved. Most of the original store fronts, the Miner’s Amusement Hall and the Catholic Church all stand as they did so long ago. On the outskirts of town, you can see what time could have done to the town if it had not been preserved by gazing at some of the buildings that have been left to the ravages of time.

Madrid may be reborn but in a lot of ways the original spirit of the old west mining town is still very much alive. In fact, if you ask the residents many of the old spirits themselves have never left.  Most of the original buildings come with a ghost story.

The Mineshaft Tavern which has always been a popular gathering place for the locals is still a popular gathering place for the spirits as well. One of the former bar tenders likes to tell of how on more than one occasion he would be locking up. Upon turning to go to his car he would hear sounds coming from inside the bar as if it were still packed with patrons. The sounds of glasses clinking, laughter and music could clearly be heard through the door. He would quickly unlock the door and throw it open only to find it deserted and silent. One of the waitresses says that upon entering the bar every morning to open, she would feel the same gentle brush across her cheek as though she had been touched by the back of someone’s hand. Others reported the regular movement of glass ware or bar tools on their own. More than one customer has told staff that they would see someone standing behind them when looking into the mirror in the restroom only to turn and find that no one was there.

The old Catholic Church is not immune to the presence of a ghost of its own. Often when one is praying alone with no one else in the church, disembodied voices can be heard praying in whispers along with the petitioner. It is not unusual to hear residents and visitors tell of a ghostly woman wearing a veil l weeping and praying on her knees near the alter only to disappear before their eyes, leaving her crying to echo in the church long after her image has faded.

There are too many accounts of shadow figures lurking in the cemetery to innumerate. They seem to be an ever-present force and bring with them a heavy feeling of dread that causes most of those thinking they were brave enough to explore the graveyard at night to flee as soon as possible. Even during the day, visitors have reported seeing black shadows, only visible from the corner of the eye, darting in and out from behind gravestones with no explanation.

Those looking for a reprieve from the supernatural activity by retreating to the safety and comfort of their B & B may be disappointed to find out that most of the homes in the area come with a ghost of their own. In this old west mining town, it seems as though the spirits of those who built it are sticking around to enjoy the next phase of its life. Perhaps when one dedicates so much of themselves to building something, it’s just too difficult to let it go, even in death.

Nearby in the ghost town of Cerrillos which shares the history of the area with Madrid, it seems that the souls of the original inhabitants are just as determined to remain.

There is not much left of the Clear Light Opera House but don’t tell that to the spirits that some believe still inhabit the old haunt. Some claim that the sounds of a piano and the haunting voice of a young lady belting out a tune can be heard late at night coming from the old building. Others have even claimed to hear applause and laughter emanating from the old walls. One of the residents that I had the pleasure of meeting said that she has walked outside at night and heard the playing of a piano coming from the crumbling old building and the sounds of laughter that convinced her that there must have been a party going on. But as she approached all of the music and laughter simply stopped “as if the needle was lifted off of a record” and there was nothing but the sounds of crickets.

The Casa Grande Trading Post houses the mining museum and a small petting zoo and is also purported to be the home of several ghosts. Visitors have seen a mysterious lady in white wandering the grounds at night and others have seen the apparition of a small boy in period clothing during business hours. Tourists often report walking through cold spots or feeling a tug on their clothing as they peruse the gift shop. It is not uncommon for strange light anomalies to appear in photographs.  A young lady working in the gift shop was happy to share her experiences with me. “It’s not really scary, just a little unsettling”, she said, “Sometimes it catches me off guard when weird things happen, but it happens so often that other times I don’t really notice at the time. One day as I was getting ready to close up, I had my arms full of books and the door to the room I was going into opened for me and I walked in and sat the books down. Then I suddenly realized that I was the only one here. That gave me a chill.”

At Mary’s bar some of the more precocious spirits chose to stay for one more round. More than one female patron has claimed to have been pinched while sitting at the bar or making her way to the restroom. One male patron claimed that while in the restroom he could clearly hear someone in the stall next to him but when he went to wash his hands, he noticed that the stall door was open and there was no one there. Locals have even told stories of walking by the bar late at night long after closing to hear arguments and gunshots inside. Upon investigation there seemed to be nothing out of place.

Next door to Mary’s bar is the What Not Shop which seems to be the home of a friendly spirit dog which likes to make itself known to younger visitors, often brushing up against them or hitting them with his tail. It is said that he can sometimes be heard barking or howling late at night.

For the most part the ghosts of Cerrillos seem to be reliving or perhaps replaying events of the past. They seem harmless and although at times they may be disconcerting, the residents and visitors are somewhat glad they are there. Perhaps it is comforting to think that they continue and so maybe will we. I suppose that when we are visiting these places that seem to be stuck in time, we are looking for a connection to history and our own origins. While visiting this unique and storied old west town I didn’t encounter anything of the paranormal kind, but I did meet a lot of lovely people who were happy to welcome me in. I have no choice though, but to believe the stories that they were so gracious to share. I suppose if I were a ghost, I might want to linger here as well.