Birdcage Theater, and other high energy places.

Yesterday my husband and I returned from another wonderful trip to the desert southwest. I love the area, and lived in Nevada and New Mexico for about 3-4 years. I return every year for a "fix" until we can retire there. I introduced my husband to Sedona 5 years ago, and he is a convert. He loves it as much as I do.

This year I thought I would throw in a little twist. Last year the twist was a weekend in Albuquerque for the "Gathering of Nations". The biggest pow wow in the country. We learned so much, met so many wonderful people, and had a blast.

This year I tossed in Tombstone. Tombstone is best known for the gunfight at the OK Corral between the Earps and Mc Laury's. History, and even the re-enactment, show Wyatt as a hero. History tells us, not so much. Did the Mc Laury's bring on their own demise? Well I would say a month of threatening to kill the Earp brothers would probably do it, and in the old west once you put your hand on your gun, you were either going to shoot or get shot. The Mc Laury's got shot. The wild card in the bunch, no pun intended , was Doc Holliday. To me, Doc was the most interesting piece of the puzzle. He would be a person I would have liked to have met. He was smart, complex, interesting, and never missed a shot, although he wasn't in very many gunfights either. He was also very sick with tuberculosis. His reputation scared most people away. The Earps weren't choirboys. Wyatt was arrested many times for various things, and his two common law wives were prostitutes (it was legal in Tombstone in the 1800's).

So that is the mundane.....now the metaphysical.

The town of Sedona is becoming a bit of a tourist mecca. It was a spiritual mecca, and that is still there and active as always, but it is getting a bit crowded. There is traffic, and the place is packed on weekends. It is hard Thursday through Monday to get a seat at many restaurants.( I really have a hard time butying this recession bullcrap). Yet, when you get out on those trails, or in the creek, you can feel all that healing , positive energy flowing through it. It is a place of wonderful energy, and a few claimed vortices. The vortex phenomenon is a bit over rated and there are places where they are supposedly located,where there isn't much going on.It is swirling energy, it is natural, like the tides, not metaphysical really at all.

I remember hiking to a stop of a claimed vortex one year to find a bunch of women at the top of a public trail, blocking the path, and meditating. We all had to wait 15 minutes to continue up the trail. Then these wonderful creatures of love and compassion piled rocks in trees creating cairns known as hoodoos. All they made was a mess, and trust me, rocks DO NOT belong in trees. Then they hugged each other, took pictures, never for a moment, saying.."oh we are finished, go on through" . A prime example of people who think they are spiritual, actually thinking only about themselves. Hopefully they have found a spot where they aren't blocking a public trail to meditate now.

The people who live there are really wonderful , and all admit, they were called there. They all say the most interesting things when they see you , or when you leave their shops like...."continue to do good things", "celebrate the day", "enjoy the beauty of Sedona". It sure beats, "have a nice day". I just hope all the "tourists" don't ruin it! There is a saying to keep in mind when you travel "be a visitor, not a tourist!"

One day we headed to Jerome. Jerome is haunted. It is an "official" ghost town , as is Tombstone, but people do live there and thrive there. It has become an artistic community full of fun and interesting people. All are sweet, wonderful, and funny. There are the most unusual and funky clothes and jewelry made by locals, a winery we LOVE, art, food, and the haunted Jerome Hotel. You may have seen it on Ghost Adventures. I have not rented a room there yet, although I always say I will, we just run out of time....but it is haunted, and so are many of the other buildings. Many died horrible deaths there. Mining accidents (Jerome is an old mining town), disease, fights, and buildings literally sliding down the mountain from all the blasting going on underneath them. The hotel was a hospital, so that explains a lot. There are haunted bed and breakfast establishments, and restaurants. The energy is different from Sedona, but it is very much there, and worth the trip even if you just want to shop or dive into the history of it all! There are remains of buildings that have had the roofs cave in, or walls fall down, they add to the "haunted ghost town" feel.

Tombstone is the site of the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, maybe you saw one of several movies made about it. It is where either The Earps brought "lead justice" to the wild cowboys, or murdered innocent men, depending on how you see it.Wyatt wasn't the local sheriff as many believe, his brother was, and he had been deputized by his brother before the gunfight, and so had Doc Holliday. The OK Corral is said to be haunted, and it may be. I didn't feel anything there, but there were also MANY live people there, and that muddies the waters. However, the town has an aura about it. It still has the feel of a friendly place that can get dangerous at any minute. After Tombstone we visited Boot Hill. Boot Hill doesn't have a ghostly aura about it. I think all the ghosts are in town drinking and playing cards and shooting pool.Some of the grave markers however are very entertaining.

The cherry on top of the Tombstone experience, for those of you who like haunted places, is the Birdcage Theater. I went hoping it would be great, but thinking that maybe a lot of it was tourist nonsense...although I was sure it was haunted. It isn't tourist nonsense. We easily found it, and the funny part is, there are crowds of people all along the wooden sidewalk of Tombstone, but not so much in front of the Birdcage. You can feel the "spooky" from the outside and I am sure many who don't really know why, just don't want to go there.

It is amazing. History-wise and ghost-wise. The Birdcage was closed down when the mine flooded and the town went bust. Everyone pretty much got up and left. Later it was opened to just "store" a few things, like a hearse, barber chair, and equipment from the town and mines. It is a treasure trove of history.

The front room is a bar area and if you tune in , you can feel it....that feeling you get when you are in a haunted place. Some of you know what I mean, many of you have yet to find out. It isn't being scared, or nervous, it is more like just feeling energy throb out of a place. Like there are hundreds of people in a little space. It is hard to explain. You feel like there are a bunch of people right next to you and you can't see them. The bar is where they take your money, either for a self guided tour, or a night time guided ghost hunt. We weren't able to stay for that, but guess what we are doing next year....

The place is so very haunted, you don't need a night time tour. I pushed open the door and stepped into the main area and WOW....it was like it was Saturday night, 1881 and the place was packed! I said...this place is haunted for sure! Matt said it sure is, and then saw someone (who wasn't in this dimension), run up the short stairway next to the stage. I heard many noises coming from the "cribs" thinly disguised as theater boxes, above the main area.It just was as if something or someone was always moving around. I didn't even have to open up, there are ghosts there that really don't care if you hear them or see them, they are going about their business. Maybe the high energy comes from the fact that there are so many there. Tombstone claims to have buried a body a day, and the claim is true....

We walked around a while in the main room then headed up the short stairway to behind the stage. I was looking at pictures of the "soiled doves" on the wall and swore Matt was standing next to me. I could feel him, hear him scratch an itch, and sigh. I turned around and..... he wasn't there. There is a partial wall, and I walked all the way around it , sure he was there, he wasn't. He was all the way on the other side of the building looking at the Black Mariah hearse. I told him , and he said, yeah someone ran up those stairs, and is over here too. I could hear voices and looked downstairs through a grill by the stage which is an entrance to the wine cellar. There were two people down there, so I chalked it up to that. Later as the same voices continued after the people had left the building (and Matt and I were the only ones in there), I realized it wasn't them, but voices from unseen people.

The ghosts are just going about their business, things move slightly, chairs creak, backdrops sway. You hear sighs, words, movements, including people scratching an itch on a body that has disappeared from this earth a long time ago.

I wanted to go downstairs, it is a place where a lot of activity happens. I walked down and directly across the room is a crib. They have the door panels removed so you can see in, nothing has been touched since the girls left. Behind me is a poker table. Matt was still coming down the stairs, and I distinctly heard cards being shuffled. I turned and for an instant saw a card game, then it was gone. Every time you looked one place something moved just to the right or left. This building has the card hands left on the table when people got up and closed up the buildings. It has the sheets on the beds in the cribs, and glasses & bottles left on the bar. It has the original wallpaper, peeling in may places but still there, it is all original. Never touched.

There are marvelous historical things down there too, but there are also a bunch of people who maybe didn't like the way the town "ended" and wanted to continue the fun. The Birdcage is worth the trip.

Walking down the main street in town there are little signs ever few feet telling you who was shot to death on that spot. It was a violent and rowdy town. The sign on the entrace to Boot Hill says "Leave your gun outside, the grave yard is full".

We went from peaceful Sedona to avant garde' haunted Jerome, to VERY haunted, rowdy Tombstone. I think it would be awesome to just stroll down the middle of the street in Tombstone around 2 AM and see "who" I would meet.  I didn't hear any talk about my friend who believes she was reincarnated from a soiled dove there (funny that I know 2 people who have that claim, I guess we do stay in our soul groups!) so they aren't still talking about her, maybe because she didn't stay and continue to participate in the fun! The fun is still going on at the Birdcage, and maybe next year I can document it for you! I still have a bunch of photos to check out. Only time will tell! The Birdcage policy is you cannot publish photos without their permission, so they probably won't be published here. I will try to publish an outside shot of the building though.

Enjoy, and really study history. It is rarely what you learn in the movies, and rarely is actually history. Much of it is still going on!



Peshaui Wequashimese





(C)2013 Dr. R M Wolf. May not be used, copied or reproduced without prior written permission.