Haunted Places in Albuquerque, NM

The history

Albuquerque's haunted ground is Old Town, and its date is on every operator's page: the settlement was founded in 1706. Visit Albuquerque's haunted-places guide puts it plainly — Historic Old Town "was established in 1706 and is filled with quaint adobe buildings" — and Albuquerque Ghosts, the US Ghost Adventures operation in the city, frames its whole walk around that fact: "a settlement founded in 1706," whose "original adobe structures, hidden courtyards, and shadowed corners surrounding San Felipe de Neri Church hold centuries of dark secrets." AbqTours, which runs the original Old Town ghost walk, makes the same span its selling point in its own brochure material: Albuquerque was founded in 1706 and "for more than three centuries people have lived, and died, around the Old Town Plaza," in buildings that "conceal the long-forgotten secrets of lost loves, Civil War battles, murders, hangings, and hidden cemeteries."

The deeper backstory the operators work from is set out on Albuquerque Ghosts' own page, in its "Why is Albuquerque so Haunted?" section, and it is recorded here as that operator's framing: "Long before modern streets were paved, this high-desert region saw centuries of intense upheaval. From the ancestral Tigua lands and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 to Civil War skirmishes and wild frontier days, Albuquerque's past is steeped in strife. Countless unmarked graves sit quietly beneath Old Town's adobe architecture and brick paths." The page traces the city "from a rail stop to a Route 66 haven" in the same passage.

Church Street Café stands in Casa Ruiz, which Visit Albuquerque describes this way: the café "was built in the early 1700s by the Ruiz family, which owned the 18-room hacienda for nearly 200 years." Albuquerque Ghosts calls the same house "the oldest home in the city." The High Noon Restaurant & Saloon is introduced by Albuquerque Ghosts as "a historic 240-year-old building that once operated as a frontier saloon and gambling hall," while Visit Albuquerque dates its construction to the 1750s and says it was once a brothel — the two accounts are kept separate here, as each source tells it. A third walk stop, the Bottger Mansion, is dated by Albuquerque Ghosts to 1912, the residence of Charles Bottger, "whose lavish life ended in sudden financial ruin and early death," in the operator's words.

Downtown, away from the plaza, stands the city's other documented haunted landmark. The KiMo Theatre's own history page, published by the City of Albuquerque, records that the theatre was built in 1927 in the Pueblo Deco style, that it opened on September 19, 1927, and that its builder was Oreste Bachechi, who came to the United States in 1885 and commissioned architect Carl Boller to design a playhouse "in harmony with the spirit of the Southwest." The city history gives the cost at $150,000, including $18,000 for the organ, and explains the interior Boller produced after travelling through the Navajo Nation and the Pueblos of Acoma and Isleta: ceiling beams painted with dance and hunt scenes, chandeliers shaped like war drums and funeral canoes, and rows of garlanded buffalo skulls. The theatre's name, the same history notes, was won in a naming contest by Isleta Pueblo Governor Pablo Abeita: "KiMo" is a combination of two Tiwa words meaning "mountain lion," liberally interpreted as "king of its kind."

The legend

This section is folklore — reported by the operators and accounts cited, and never asserted as fact here.

Old Town's repertoire, as Albuquerque Ghosts tells it on its own page, is a marshal, a soldier, a healer and a mansion owner. The marshal is Milton Yarberry, introduced as "Albuquerque's first town marshal," whose story the operator tells at the High Noon: Yarberry was executed, and his spirit "still makes his presence known to late patrons" — the operator also summarises him in its haunted-places list as "the violent town marshal whose hanged spirit still haunts the local saloon strip." At Old Town Plaza, the same list says, "a wounded Civil War soldier's phantom continues to search for his lost love." At Casa Ruiz, the operator tells of Sara Ruiz, who "practiced herbal medicine in the 1800s" there, and says passersby who pause by the adobe walls "report experiencing unexpected warmth and a soothing tingle from within"; its list version calls her "the ancient healing traditions of Sara Ruiz" and asks "why her benevolent essence remains at Casa Ruiz." Visit Albuquerque's account of the same house is different in its details and is kept separate: it says spooky things began after the final Ruiz family member, Rufina G. Ruiz, passed away in 1991, that the new owner Marie Coleman heard a disembodied voice during renovation, and that the voice "was determined" to be Rufina's mother, Sara Ruiz, with employees reporting a woman in a long black dress in the dining room after hours. Neither account is asserted here, and the difference between them is part of the record. At the Bottger Mansion, Albuquerque Ghosts says witnesses outside "describe hearing footsteps in the halls and spotting a pacing figure dressed in a sharp suit," and its list adds "a local curse and a notorious 1930s gangster" to the mansion's legacy — the operator's telling, carried as such. At the High Noon, Visit Albuquerque adds its own reported figure, "the Lady in the White Dress who is sometimes seen in the restaurant's Santos Room," with bartenders reporting glasses sliding across the bar. Near San Felipe de Neri Church, Albuquerque Ghosts' list promises "buried skulls and a guardian priest." The region's oldest travelling legend is in Visit Albuquerque's guide under Arroyos: La Llorona, "the Spirit of La Llorona, Spanish for weeping woman," said to wander arroyos and ditches "in a long white gown, forever weeping as she searches for her children," a legend the guide notes "is often told to children by their parents in order to get them to behave and to not wander off after dark."

AbqTours' own ghost-tour page tells its walk in the same attributed register: "Civil War phantoms, wandering apparitions, and untimely tragedies," and "eyewitness accounts of hauntings — from vanishing full-body apparitions to ghostly voices and unexplained activity." Those are the operator's descriptions of what its guides recount, recorded as such.

Visit Albuquerque tells the theatre's story this way: the KiMo "is said to be home to the spirit of 6-year-old Bobby Darnall Jr. In 1951, a water heater exploded in the theater, injuring a small group and killing young Bobby. It is believed that his spirit haunts the theatre, especially near the stage area, by messing with the electrical power and leaving or dropping things on the stage to distract performers," and performers who do not leave a gift "might fall victim to his various practical jokes," with gifts "ranging from toys to candy" still left today. The boy's death in 1951 is the documented part. The haunting that grew from it is folklore, and an investigation of it is on the record: the theatre's Wikipedia entry, used here as a lead and summarised with its sceptical finding intact, reports that writer Benjamin Radford determined the performance of A Christmas Carol said to have been ruined by the ghost actually occurred in 1986, not 1974, that two people involved did not remember anything unusual, and that Radford concluded the ruined play — "the very genesis of the KiMo ghost story — simply did not occur; it is but folklore and fiction." The same entry reports that Bobby Darnall's siblings told Radford they felt exploited by the story. This page therefore carries the KiMo tradition as a tradition the city tells about itself, with its documented rebuttal attached, and asserts no haunting at the theatre as fact.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 5 places in Albuquerque, NM. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• Albuquerque Little Theatre — haunted place, 224 San Pasquale Avenue SW, Albuquerque, NM 87104
• Church Street Cafe — haunted place, 2111 Church Street NW, Albuquerque, NM 87104
• High Noon Restaurant & Saloon — haunted place, 425 San Felipe Street NW, Albuquerque, NM 87104
• Hotel Andaluz — haunted place, 125 2nd Street NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
• KiMo Theatre — haunted place, 423 Central Avenue NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102

Attraction stories

KiMo Theatre

The City of Albuquerque's KiMo history page — the theatre's own site — records a Pueblo Deco picture palace built in 1927 for Oreste Bachechi, designed by Carl Boller after journeys through the Navajo Nation and the Pueblos of Acoma and Isleta, completed in just over a year for $150,000 including an $18,000 organ, and opened on September 19, 1927 with a first feature, the silent comedy Painting The Town. It records the name contest won by Isleta Pueblo Governor Pablo Abeita, the $50 prize, and the meaning of KiMo as "mountain lion," liberally "king of its kind." It follows the building through the Depression, the 1948 world premiere of the Western Albuquerque on its stage, a large fire in the early 1960s that nearly destroyed the stage, designation on the National Register of Historic Places fifty years after opening, and the city's purchase in 1977, when the building was "slated for destruction" and "saved when the citizens of Albuquerque voted to purchase this unrivaled palace." The city's Meet The KiMo page gives the working present: the theatre at 423 Central Ave. NW hosts films, plays and performances, tickets are sold through ABQtickets.com, and free Meet The KiMo events offer tours of the landmark.

No published ghost lore appears on the KiMo's own history or visit pages collected: the theatre presents itself as a historic stage, not a haunted site, and this story invents none for it. The Bobby Darnall tradition — the 1951 water-heater explosion that killed the six-year-old, the gifts of toys, candy and donuts said to be left for him, and the electrical mischief attributed to him — is told by Visit Albuquerque and summarised in The legend above, where it is carried together with Benjamin Radford's documented investigation concluding that the ruined-play genesis story did not occur and that the boy's siblings felt exploited by the tale. A reader who wants the legend and a reader who wants the check on the legend will find both, labelled as what they are.

*Website: https://www.cabq.gov/artsculture/kimo*