By Toni Gibbons As the evening sky faded from the pastel hues of the red and blue laced sunset, deepening the gloom of the night, people gathered at the Painted Desert Inn at the Petrified Forest National Park to take the ghostly tour led by Park Ranger Hallie Larsen. Standing on the stone patio, overlooking the breathtaking views of the park, Larsen passed out glow sticks, reminding everyone to be careful of the steps in the inn, with her dry spark of humor, Larsen noted that no one had ever been lost on a tour, yet! “Most cultures have stories of ghosts and spirits,” began Larsen. “Whether it is true or not, is up to you to decide. We aren’t here for that. To me the stories are the important part. Sometimes the stories are very scientific, sometimes very historical and sometimes they are about the strange pig in the pink tutu named Princess Fiona. That’s what makes these places so fun to come to.” While the inn is about 100 years old, it’s not so much about the age, but the stories connected to it. “The whole park is built on ghosts,” said Larsen. “Can’t you just imagine the ghost of a Coelophysis dinosaur coming out of the dirt and walking across the ground?” “The trees are ghosts, the fossils tell the story about how things were,” continued Larsen, as she painted the pictures of those who had lived so long ago, including the Paleo-Indians who hunted the giant bison. “The bison back then were bigger with six foot horns on either side of their head and here these guys with stone tipped tools killed these animals. Talk about macho; those guys were mega macho.” “But time passes and now we have people who have lived here for a long time,” said Larsen, her voice softening. “The ruins of the villages sometimes echo the voices of the people who once lived there. You can barely hear them, but they are there. The people, who once lived here, still live here creating a great continuity of culture.” The Painted Desert Inn, which is the center for the ghostly visits, was built from petrified wood and stones that lay on the land by Herbert David Lore and registered with the land office in 1924. For nearly 12 years, Lore ran the “Stone Tree House,” as it was called, to bring in tourists. Six small rooms were available for nightly rental with meals provided in the lunchroom and American Indian art available for purchase. In the early 1930s, Lore sold the house to the National Park Service. From there it was transformed into the Painted Desert Inn by the men of the Civilian Conservation Corps and later came under the watchful management of Fred Harvey with the Harvey Girls. In 1962, Larsen said the Inn closed as part of the modernization of the parks across the nation. “Fortunately, local people said no,” shared Larsen. It was totally a grass root effort. The people said this is part of our history and got it on the National Historic Register in 1976.” By 1987 it was named a National Historic Landmark. Between 2004 and 2006 more updates were completed, continuing a tradition that gives way to the ghostly stories Larsen told as the darkness of night closed in around. Among the stories were tales of the bathroom ghosts, the tapping sounds of footsteps on the stairs, down halls and on the roof. Some visitors and staff have smelled cigarette smoke even though smoking is not allowed in the building. The first story started in the trade room, which is the heart of the building. “Imagine if you will a night much like this, only the sun is setting at 4:30 in the afternoon as it’s later in the season,” started Larsen. “One ranger is closing up the building. All doors are locked, except for the ones that she opened to go out onto the patio. Now this ranger is very pragmatic, she is into science and education. Except this night, something happened that neither science nor education could explain. As she glanced back into the room, she saw a shape in the fading evening light. Then she saw the hand that came up with a little glowing orange tip. She could see the smoke trailing off into the darkness. That’s when she started yelling, ‘You can’t smoke in there,’ as she burst back into the room. She could smell the smoke, but no one was there. A quick check of the premises revealed all the doors locked and not a soul around.” Then there was the story of the museum curator and his wife who came to see the mural on the wall in the little lunchroom. The darkness of night was slowly slipping in, when the wife began to wander to another room. “As she started to cross out of the room, she felt a draft and then all of the lights went out,” shared Larsen. “The curator and his wife stumbled around in the dark finally finding a little flashlight that they clicked on. But nothing was there. As the curator walked around, he felt the draft where his wife had felt it. It was a bubble of cold and they both got the chills; the kind that makes the back of your neck prickle and goes down your spine. They didn’t see anything, but the feeling was very spooky and chilling. Intimidated by the cold bubble, they packed up and left.” The last stop was the room at the end of the hall in the basement next to the bathroom, which Larsen noted “needs to be said in a spooky voice.” In recent years, one of the women who worked at the Inn came downstairs to get some books for restocking. While down there, the woman realized she needed to visit the bathroom. At the time, the room only had a simple bolt that could be thrown from the inside, which prevented anyone from the outside accessing the room when it was occupied. “The worker was by herself, taking her time, and then the doorknob rattled,” said Larsen. “In a sing-songy voice she said ‘occupied.’ The rattling stopped. So the worker went back to the business at hand. Suddenly, the knob rattled again, this time shaking the door. ‘Occupied!’ said the worker a little louder, no more sing-song left in her voice. That is when the knob started to turn. The doorknob could turn from the outside, but the bolt stopped it from opening. The worker hastily finished her business, grabbing the bolt, she flung the door open, yelling, ‘Occupied, don’t you know what that means?’ as she looked down an empty hallway.” Larsen paused, the basement room was a little darker and just a little spookier, as she said, “Do you think I have ever used that bathroom? I want to know what naughty ghost doesn’t understand what ‘occupied’ means? The employee never used the bathroom again.” One of the guests suggested that maybe the ghost really needed to use the facilities. To which, Larsen laughed, “Exactly, that ectoplasm might get heavy after a bit.” As the tour slowly came to an end, Larsen shared the last story. “There was the disappearing footprint from a child or young woman that stayed on the floor for two months before it disappeared. We have stories of cold, and stories of locks jiggling, but there is one story of the manager of this place Marion Mace who lived here in the late 1950s. She was a smoker and was known to smoke in her bed. One night there was a fire, believed to have started from her cigarette. Some of the other people who lived nearby came over to see if they could douse the fast moving flames. A young ranger ran through the smoke into the heavy flames and scooped Marion up, carrying her up the stairs to the front of the inn, laying her in the grass near the parking lot. Unfortunately, Marion didn’t make it. Marion loved this place; she used to talk to people about how she was tied to it, so maybe she still is.” Larsen continued, “When I have tried to arm the alarm at night, it won’t go on if there are things going on in the building. There are times I can see movement in the kitchen, movement in the trading room and it just might be her. It isn’t really scary because I always say hello building, hello everyone who might be here whenever I come here. I have no proof, but the stories we tell are very important.” Larsen then shared the more recent chapter of the Marion Mace story. “A friend of mine who used to work here had been hiking in the back country. It was getting late and he was coming up the steps to the parking lot when a man coming down the steps said to him, ‘Hurry, she’s in trouble. Come with me.’ As my friend ran up the stairs, he had this nagging feeling that something was wrong. When he got up to the parking lot, it was empty. No one was there. And then he realized, as he stood near where Marion Mace had spent her final moments on this earth, that the man he had met on the stairs was wearing clothes from a very different era, like from the 1950s.” “Remember these stories,” concluded Larsen. “I don’t mind if you don’t believe or do believe, but stories are what we share.” With those words and the stories echoing throughout the room, the visitors stepped out of the inn into the dark night of the park, experiencing the wonder of the brilliant stars within the skies. No ghosts were seen that night, but there is always another time and another story.
