Ghost town or a town of ghosts?

When I began my research for an upcoming book about Dawson, New Mexico, my sole focus was on the former.

After all, the earthbound story of the old mining town was scary enough:

Two massive mine explosions 10 years apart.

Nearly 400 men killed between them, the first the nation’s second deadliest.

A remote cemetery – the lone reminder of the town today – with its sea of white iron crosses marking the burial sites of the 383 men killed in 1913 (263) and 1923 (120).

This I knew.

What I should have known is the dark side of Dawson’s history would attract some otherworldly attention, too.

I didn’t need to read much beyond these headlines:

• Step Inside the Creepy, Abandoned Town of Dawson in New Mexico
• The Ghosts of Dawson, New Mexico
• New Mexico Ghosts: Dawson
• Haunted Dawson Cemetery, New Mexico
• Haunted Room America’s No 1 ranking in Most Haunted Places in New Mexico.

‘Strange cold spots’

What prompted these and similar articles?

Reports of “strange cold spots” near certain graves on hot days. Male voices whispering words of “warning and danger.” The sound of “full-throated moans” coupled with the sight of “human-shaped patches of fog.” Nightly visions of bobbing lights as if “men wearing mining helmets were wandering among the gravestones.”

“As a matter of fact, Dawson is said to be one of the most haunted locations in all of New Mexico,” according to The Haunted Ghost Town of Dawson, New Mexico.  “Several people who have visited the cemetery (especially during the night) have claimed to have seen unexplained lights similar to those that are mounted on the front part of the helmets that miners wear while working. Others have witnessed ghostly apparitions walking among the headstones of where they were buried. Perhaps the miners are still hard at work digging for coal so many years after they passed away.”

The graveyard is no stranger to books about haunted places, either.

In Ghost Stories of Arizona and New Mexico, author Dan Asfar writes: “The miners of Dawson risked their lives to make a buck, and in the end, for (383) of them, their rough jobs on the hard periphery of the United States cost them their lives. They still don’t seem too happy about it.”

Enter the ghost hunters

Reports such as these attracted the attention of the Southwest Ghost Hunters Association, an organization founded in 1985 by Cody Polston, a ghost investigator, historian, and author of such books as New Mexico’s Most Haunted: Exposed, Ghosts of Old Town Albuquerque, and Haunted Tombstone.

The group’s goal is to “skeptically investigate haunted locations by using critical thinking and employing investigative methods that we have learned and developed,” according to the association’s website. “We believe that ghosts and hauntings are an explainable phenomena and that the empirical investigation of reality leads to the truth.”

That’s precisely what the group did in 2000, prompted in part by a “3^rd hand account” from a worker at the St. James Hotel in Cimarron – a historic property with its own reputation for haunted happenings – and Dawson Cemetery’s listing in Dennis William Hauck’s book, The National Directory of Haunted Places.

Polston conducted three investigations in the summer of 2000, sending observation teams to the cemetery in search of anything that could have been misconstrued as “paranormal or a ghost,” according the group’s final report.

Among its key findings:

• Wind whistling through the nearby canyon may be responsible for the “moans” heard at the cemetery.

• Gnat-like insects illuminated by flashlight – especially when viewed from beyond 20 feet – may have been the source of  the “apparitions” seen roaming among the tombstones.

“As with most sites where a tragedy has occurred, the town of Dawson became the location of another ghost story,” the report concluded. “The ‘haunting’ of its cemetery appears to be an urban legend. The ‘reported phenomenon’ of the story has several rational explanations.”

Case closed?

Perhaps.

At the end of Polston’s video detailing his investigation — Dawson Cemetery, is it haunted? —  he leaves the door slightly ajar.

“But who knows?” he says. “Maybe one of you out there on the internet has had something unusual happen to you … I would be very interested in knowing if you had a paranormal experience out at the cemetery.”

I suspect he wouldn’t be the only one.