La Isla de las Muñecas

The legend goes that the man who created the island of the dolls (La Isla de las Muñecas) was a loner named Don Julian Santana. He was haunted by the ghost of a teenage girl who drowned near his property. The teenager and two other young girls fell out of a boat in Lake Xochimilco. Two of the girls swam to safety, but the third one couldn't swim. No sooner had the two friends made shore than they noticed the third girl was missing. They bravely went back into the murky water to try to save their friend, but they couldn't find her. Frightened, the girls went back for help. That night, Don Julian believed he heard the voice of a girl calling out to him and in the morning he found her lifeless body. After that night, Don Julian was terrified of the ghost of the girl. He began collecting dolls to appease the restless spirit. Every time he went out, he collected more dolls from wherever he could find them; broken and discarded dolls served as well as new ones. The dolls made him feel safer, but only momentarily, as he was required to bring a new doll each time he passed the area where the girl had drowned. He was never completely free of her angry spirit. Don Julian continued to be plagued by her presence for the next fifty years and the dolls satisfied the ghost enough to let him live. Until 2001. That year, he had a heart attack and fell dead into the water at the exact spot where the girl had drowned. And he did NOT live happily ever after. — at Xochimilco.

Colorado Socks It To Me

I'm happy to report that I recently signed on with Feral House publishing. I'm not going to write too much about The True Life Adventures of Violence Girl because I'm superstitious about the projects I work on. I don't like to talk about something and then have something go wrong - not that I think anything will but that's not my style.

My advance check was burning a hole in my pocket and I didn't have to think too long before I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. My husband's birthday is this month and my daughter is about to go back to school. I decided to seize the opportunity to grant Greg one of his long unfulfilled wishes: to spend the night at the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining, the famously haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.

The Stanley is located about an hour outside of Denver so the first leg of our adventure starts in Denver, a town I couldn't recall ever wanting to visit. Not being a skier or an outdoorsy type, it was hard to imagine what attraction Colorado could possibly hold for me. Aside from the fact that it's the place Nina Flowers (the first runner up in RuPaul's Drag Race) calls home, I imagined Denver to be culturally delayed but I couldn't be more wrong. Not only does the place have awesome natural beauty, it knows how to get a little dirty and funky.

We did some of the touristy things like watching a screening of the 1970's version of Willy Wonka outside on a giant screen in front of a grand old clocktower and taking in the Molly Brown House tour (love her!). On Sunday night, my husband and I went to a bar called Charlie's where a local promoter hosts a drag revue called Vivid. OK, so maybe a drag show is not cutting edge but the vibe was so good, the admission was free, the bartenders poured with a heavy hand and the audience was an unpretentious mix of gay, straight, glamorous and slovenly drag enthusiasts that I had a wonderful time. I was really hoping for a chance to see Nina Flowers but she was out of town. Still, it was a great time and I recommend Charlie's if you find yourself in Denver on a Sunday night.

I've already mentioned that The Stanley is the hotel that Stephen King credits with inspiring him to write The Shining. My husband loves ghost stories and every time we go out of town, he tries to find the haunted sites so we can visit them. The Stanley had been on his list for a long time and I have to admit I was afraid to stay there, but love is stronger than fear so we made the hour plus drive north to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The Estes Park area is beautiful, very green with a mountain stream running alongside the winding highway. A few teenagers walked on the side of the road carting their inner tubes, disheveled and wet, looking like they were having the best time. Almost as soon as you get into town, you can see the hotel in the distance up on a little hill. The Stanley really does "shine." Maybe it just seemed like it to me but as soon as we started to drive up the hill towards the hotel, I felt like I was transitioning into a different reality. The Stanley Kubrick movie wasn't shot at the hotel so it doesn't look the same but you know how some places (like some people) just seem to have loads of personality? Well this place has got it. I quickly went from feeling scared to feeling excited.

We got there early and our room wasn't ready so we got a bite to eat then walked around exploring and taking pictures. When check-in time finally arrived my charming husband received an upgrade from the front office clerk who put us in a large, supposedly haunted two room suite on the 4th floor. It just kept getting better after that. The early evening was filled with a staff guided ghost and history tour where we had the chance to meet other ghost hunters of varying levels of commitment. We took the last ghost tour of the day and I got an orb in one of my photographs. My husband observed that the Stanley Hotel is like Disneyland for ghost enthusiasts and as the evening progressed, the regular tourists cleared out and the ghost hunters took over.

My daughter and a couple of teenage boys put candy out as bait in the 4th floor corridor where the nursery used to be and where the sound of spectral kids playing and apparitions of children have been seen and heard. This led to more orbs in the photographs. Groups of investigators armed with electromagnetic frequency detectors and other gadgets combed the darkened hallways searching for cold spots and energy spikes. We caught a glimpse of a professional video and sound crew taping a "ghost session" in a bedroom. Around 11:30pm, we decided to go back out and look for ghosts on our own. The lunatics had taken over the asylum - I mean the ghosthunters had the Stanley to themselves. With foot traffic at a minimum it was easier to hear. We walked past the music room where I thought I heard the sound of a piano playing a melody that was incongruous with the classical music that was being played in the lobby.

"Can you hear that?" I asked my husband incredulously and he gave me a puzzled look. Feeling brave, I decided to walk up to the piano to see if the sound would get louder, but I was distracted from the sound when I saw a faint cloudy film moving in front of the piano. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes and exclaimed "Oh my god!" I'd been carrying my cell phone in my hand and started snapping pictures as quickly as I could with my cell phone camera. Greg rushed to me when he heard me gasp and looked over my shoulder.

"What is that? It's moving around!" He could see the white mist on the digital camera screen as well.

I don't know!" The hair on my arms and on the back of my neck stood at attention, then as suddenly as it had appeared the cloud vanished. We looked back at our photos and realized that the substance appeared in some shots but not in others.





Three shots of the Music Room at The Stanley Hotel, Estes Park CO. Shot by Alice Bag on August 3, 2009 with an Iphone camera.

We wandered around a little more after this excitement and finally crawled into our beds around 1:30 am, thoroughly exhausted but enchanted with our experiences. I slept soundly and didn't wake until the next morning but my husband reported that sometime between 3 and 4 am, he was awakened by the muffled sounds of children having a conversation overhead. The only problem was that being on the 4th floor, we were at the top of the building and no rooms were above us. Tapping and knocking sounds kept him awake for awhile before he pulled the blankets up and fell back asleep.

We left Estes Park the next day to catch our flight back home, sad that our mini-vacation was over so quickly but happy to have had the chance to scratch off one of the stranger items on our quirky little family's list of places to go and things to do.

Ghost Town Travelogue

It’s beginning to look a lot like Halloween. Not that I need a special reason to start crafting with skulls, ghosts and other ghoulish creatures, but each autumn I feel my love of the dark side rekindled. When I lived in Glassell Park, I used to have my house done up in Dia de Los Muertos decor year round. My walls were painted with bright, bright colors and a permanent collection of devil masks, calaveras and little skeleton shrines were on display regardless of the season, which led my mother to place cut out paper crosses on the foreheads of my "demonios" for my own protection, but I digress...I really meant to talk about Halloween.



This past weekend, we drove up to Jerome for their annual Ghost Walk. We had been to a Ghost Walk last year in Prescott and I’ve started to wonder if this is a uniquely Arizonan tradition. I’ve taken ghost tours in different cities but usually they involve a tour guide relating spooky stories as the group visits various locations purported to be haunted. It’s done differently here.

In Jerome, we began our evening by meeting in the town hall where we were sorted into small groups while a trio of musicians sang about death, murder and phantoms. Each group departed from the town hall and from there we went to different locations around the small town. At each location, we were met by the "ghosts" of Jerome who told us the details of their own passing. The actors were costumed in period dress and put on a little skit reenacting the significant moments leading up to their deaths. It was fun and entertaining.



I’ve written about Jerome before. It is a colorful place, as befits a mining ghost town that refuses to rest in peace. Inhabited by the type of people who would inhabit a ghost town, it is quirky, spooky and artistic. The ghost walk was fun, but not scary at all. Walking around Jerome on any given night is much scarier. There are places here that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. If you ever drop by, take the unpaved road up to The Jerome Grand Hotel and have a drink at the Asylum. If you should plan to stay and don’t mind a sleepless night, you could get a room at The Jerome Grand Hotel, The Connor Hotel or The Inn at Jerome, all of which are reputedly haunted.



I like to actually sleep, so The Ghost City Inn with its homemade peanut butter cookies suits me just fine, although it is also reportedly haunted. The last time we visited, we ate at the Haunted Hamburger, but this time, we opted for the delicious veggie burgers at the Mile High Inn & Grill. Locals say that just about every place in Jerome has its own spirits. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, it's a good place to visit anytime of year, but especially when there is a chill in the air and you're in the mood for some spooky fun.