Dawn Berkoski

When I left Tombstone, I thought I left the past behind. I didn’t realize that my next destination was filled with ghosts.

Driving through parts of Arizona, I felt like I’d wandered into a Georgia O’Keeffe or Salvador Dali painting, with long stretches of desert valleys, hills the shade of rust to fiery-orange, and the occasional skeleton, or two.

There is something else, something mystical about the areas where the red rocks form, the unique soil, the buzzing energy in the air that makes you feel like you’ve crossed through the Veil. You can drive for miles, see the same sand and spiky green cacti, and yet the scenery is completely different. It’s a place where time slips but never changes.

And as you go south, towards the burnt sienna sands of the Sonoran Desert, where the Hohokam people lived thousands of years ago, and tribes like the O’odham live today, you find massive and mystical cave systems that stretch deep beneath the surface. And something darker: The remnants of gold mines, greed, Tuberculosis, and violent death.

Dug too Deep lives there.

The Copper Queen Mine is said to be one of those haunted places, where hundreds died, and the ghostly sounds of their coughing and moaning can still be heard.

Of course, I had to go.

So, after walking around town and visiting one of the oldest libraries in Arizona, the Copper Queen Library , I hurried to join the last underground tour, and learned all about the rise and fall of the historic mining town of Bisbee, Arizona. A lesson that would come to life, or afterlife, when the sun went down.

Dawn B~