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Historic haunted places in Tombstone, AZ. Each page gives the ghost story, whether visitors can go, and a link to the site the story came from. The stories are folklore, not documented fact.
5 listings shown.
Haunted place
The building opened in 1880 as the Grand Hotel, a favorite of the Earps, the Clantons and the McLaurys. Staff blame a spirit called the Swamper, said to guard silver he hid in the …
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
Opened in 1881 as a theater, saloon, brothel and gambling hall, the Bird Cage is tied to 26 deaths in its rowdy heyday. Visitors report figures in 1800s dress, piano music and laug…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
Founded in 1878, Boothill holds about 250 graves, including Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers from the 1881 gunfight. Neighbors and visitors describe strange lights, odd sound…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
Built in 1879 as the Golden Eagle Brewery and rebuilt after the 1882 fire, this saloon was a favorite of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Ghost tour guides say a few old regulars never…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Haunted place
The famous 1881 shootout that killed Billy Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury actually happened just west of the corral, on Fremont Street. The ghosts of cowboys and lawmen are said…
This story is folklore told about a real place. It is not presented as documented fact.
Tombstone's haunted map is a silver town's map. The operators who walk its streets today all start from the same documented frame, in Tombstone Terrors' own summary: a town built on "the rise of silver mining," on "violent shootouts and lawless days of the frontier," and on "the hardships of living in Tombstone" — fortunes "won and lost," lives "cut short by violence," and "the difficult realities of mining and surviving in the Wild West." Ghost City Tours' researched mining page adds the chapter the gunfight stories usually skip: the working conditions that killed miners underground, and "the 1886 flooding crisis that collapsed the economy" — the water that ended the boom the silver had started.
The town's best-preserved building tells the boom in one address. The Bird Cage Theatre's own site dates its opening to December 26, 1881, and names its owners, Lottie and William "Billy" Hutchinson. Hutchinson, a variety performer, "originally intended to present respectable family shows like he'd seen in San Francisco," and the theatre hosted a Ladies Night for the respectable women of Tombstone, who could attend for free. "But the economics of Tombstone didn't support their aspirations," the site says. "They soon canceled the Ladies Night and began offering baser entertainment that appealed to the rough mining crowd." What replaced respectability is still on display: the original 1880s fixtures, chandeliers, wallpaper, stage and balcony boxes, which the site stresses are authentic, not reconstructed — "Nothing was reconstructed after Tombstone's fires because the Bird Cage survived them."
One Tombstone house carries a paper trail unusual in this series. The Buford House, on East Safford Street, was built in 1880 by George Washington Buford, "one of the original settlers of Tombstone," per Tombstone Terrors' history of the house. Buford lived there with his wife Anne and their seven children; three of the children died young during a diphtheria outbreak. The house was sold in 1888, and that same year, per the operator's account, George Daves shot Petra Edmunds outside the house and then shot himself — a story the operator notes "was reported in the Tombstone Epitaph on April 14, 1888." Edmunds, in that account, survived and married another man. The house went on to be a boarding house, a bed and breakfast and a private residence, home at various times to a state senator, a mayor and two sheriffs.
And over everything stands the event the tours are named for. Tombstone Terrors meets its guests "between the Birdcage Theater and Hotel Tombstone," walks them past the O.K. Corral — "famous for the legendary gunfight that defined Tombstone's reputation," in one tour account's words — and finishes at Boothill Graveyard. Even the hearse is preserved: the Bird Cage displays the Black Moriah, trimmed in 24k gold and sterling silver, which its site says "carried all but six of the Tombstone AZ residents to Boothill Graveyard" and ran from 1881 to 1917.
This section is folklore — reported by the sources cited, and never asserted as fact here.
The Bird Cage's own ghost-tour page is the town's boldest claimant, and its claims are carried here as the theatre's own. The theatre calls itself "ground zero for paranormal activity" and "one of the most haunted buildings in the west." Its history, in its own telling, includes 16 gun and knife fights that left over 140 bullet holes throughout the building, and a basement poker game it bills as the West's longest, lasting 8 years, 5 months and 3 days. Of the haunting, its ghost-tour page reports: "Visitors and Employees of The Bird Cage Theater have reported seeing the spirits of former Prostitutes and Men in Cowboy hats. Some claim to have been touched and pushed by unseen forces. At night, the sounds of laughter, yelling and music have been heard, as though the parties of 'The Old West' were still raging." Its homepage adds the named corners: shadowy corners and staircases where "guests report apparitions," odd shapes near the stage curtains, and a "lady In White" hallway behind the stage, "frequently photographed due to recurring ghost sightings." Tombstone Terrors, a separate operator, puts its own figure on the same building — that twenty-six people were murdered within its walls — and that number is carried here as Tombstone Terrors' claim, not the theatre's.
At Big Nose Kate's Saloon, Tombstone Terrors retails the Swamper legend: a miner — "Swampy," in its telling — who allegedly hid silver somewhere in the building, and whose ghost "still lingers to protect his treasure," alongside reports of furniture moving on its own and doors opening and closing without explanation. At the O.K. Corral, the same operator reports that visitors "often report hearing the chilling sound of phantom gunshots, echoing from the infamous gunfight," and at Schieffelin Hall, a "mysterious lady in red" is said to roam the hallways. These are the operator's route stories, attributed as such.
The Buford House legends follow its documented sorrows, and Tombstone Terrors presents them as beliefs, which is how they are presented here. The Buford children's spirits "have been heard and felt ever since" their deaths, per the operator; children laughing, lights and faucets turning on and off by themselves, rappings in the walls, and a front doorbell that "will ring at 3 a.m. even though no one is outside" are all reported in its account. George Daves is its "most active and arguably most unpleasant spirit" — female guests, the operator says, have felt an unseen hand.
Hountix lists 5 places in Tombstone, AZ. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.
The Bird Cage is the rare haunted attraction that is also the primary source for its own story. Its site, collected, leads with preservation: "The Theatre Frozen in Time." The chandeliers, wallpaper, stage and balcony boxes are "all authentic to the building's boomtown era," and the bullet holes visitors photograph "remain in the woodwork" — "not decorative, but the result of real gunfights," in the site's words, scars the building "preserved rather than repairing." The small curtained balcony boxes — the "Bird Cages" themselves — are described as miniature private rooms suspended over the theatre floor, used by sex workers during performances, with ornate Victorian trim. Below stairs, the site describes subterranean gambling rooms "carved out to house high-stakes gambling rooms, including the legendary faro table," with crude ventilation shafts against the smoke and heat.
The history the site tells is the one in the city story above: opened December 26, 1881 by Lottie and William Hutchinson, family shows attempted and abandoned, and a room that then served the mining crowd as, in the theatre's own summary elsewhere on its site, "a combination of a Saloon, Gambling Hall, House of ill repute, and Theatre." The New York Times line the theatre quotes about itself — "the wildest wickedest night spot between Basin Street and the Barbary Coast" — is the theatre quoting the Times, and is carried at that strength. On display inside is the Black Moriah hearse, which the site values, via the Ford Museum, at over two million dollars, and around which, the site says, the nightly ghost tours are based "due to the High amount of Paranormal Activity that may be connected to 'The Black Moriah'."
Practically, per the theatre's ghost-tour page: daytime self-guided tours run daily, and the ghost tours start at 6:15 p.m. — a family tour open to children 7 and over with a parent — with a teen-and-adult tour at 8:00 p.m. and an adult-only 9:30 p.m. tour on certain holidays, Fridays and Saturdays, as management determines. The tour costs $35 per person per that page, visits each room with the documented paranormal activity for that room, and includes a lights-out portion; guests may bring cameras and amateur ghost-hunting equipment for personal use, and the theatre requires no alcohol before the tour. Confirm current times and prices on the site before going.
*Website: https://www.tombstonebirdcage.com/*