Hometown Tales Podcast

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Tombstone, AZ - Boot Hill

“Boot Hill”: think of it and you picture gunfights. Think gunfights and you think of people dying. Dying in horrible, traumatic fashion. Being untimely ripped from your life by a hot bullet in the gut is a wonderful way to create a ghost.

Two hundred fifty nine tombstones and crude, wooden crosses mark the final resting places of people like Tom &Frank McLowrey and Billy Clanton, killed in the Earp-Clanton feud battle at the OK Corral; M. R. Peel, murdered in Charleston; Pat Lynch and Dutch Annie.
But how many are actually resting?

This town is packed with ghosts. As it should be: it was one of the more bloody towns of the old American west. One paranormal hotspot is today’s Birdcage Theatre, which at the time was a theatre, saloon, brothel, dance hall, casino. The Birdcage was host to (legendarily)sixteen gunfights, numerous deaths, and 140 bullet holes in the ceiling and walls.