Haunted Durango
Taking a trip on the darker side of town

by Brandon Mathis

Mike Richard is a photographer. He has lived in Durango most of his life and likes sharing his work. However, his photos reveal something that most others don’t. Paging through his portfolio, one notices something different. Quite different. There’s the séance photo of someone’s head coming out of the kitchen sink. Another startling image of a man in a cowboy hat sitting in a graveyard. There are photos of beams of light that “just weren’t there” and silhouettes of people in windows of old, abandoned county jails. He has photos of inexplicable things from all over the country – photos of flying saucers over Colorado, ghosts in California and gnomes in New Mexico.

You see, Richard doesn’t photograph pretty mountain lakes and fields of summer flowers. He photographs the paranormal.

With countless images of spirits, aliens, energy force fields and more, he is a world leading paranormal photographer. Those who know him call him “the ghost guy,” a fitting label he is comfortable with. “People just call me,” he said with a shrug. “I’m listed in New Age and metaphysical magazines,” Richard said. “But all my work is based on science. It’s a scientific thing, not based on religion.”

Richard, pronounced Ri-Shard, holds an MA in photography and says his interest in photographing the “other side” began 17 years ago with a phone call from Hewlett Packard in California. “They said they had a problem and flew me down there,” he said. “I checked it out and said I’d come back that night. Meanwhile, at a bookstore, a book fell off the shelf right in front of me called Photographing the Spirit World. The owner said she had never seen the book before and we found out it had been out of print for 10 years. I thought, ‘OK, I can take a hint.’ I got the photos and I’ve been doing it ever since."

Since that first phone call, he has photographed everything from UFOs to extreme alternative healers. He uses a special infrared film and a 35mm camera to achieve his results. No tricky digital technology, no complicated computer software. He says he just has a talent for it, a gift.

Perhaps an experience as a child affected him to some degree. “I drowned when I was 7,” Richard explained. “There was this big hole in the ocean, andI just slipped down it but was pushed up by this white light. The energy involved was incredible. I think it was alive – that’s the only way I can describe it."

Photographing the spirit world is no easy task, and Richard says he never knows what to expect. “Sometimes you see things through the lens and other times you end up waiting. I’ll sit in total darkness and wait, even if it takes eight hours,” he said. “It’s a gut feeling, an intuition. I feel it, even if I can’t see it. Like these ruins in Sedona, I just knew something was there.”

Richard boasts the only published photographs of an Ancestral Puebloan spirit, taken at the cliff dwelling just outside Sedona.

While many of his photographs evoke amazement and wonder, not all were positive experiences. “I’ve been terrified a couple of times. Seeing a dead guy chasing his wife with a knife, and I’m out there chasing him. It was terrifying,” said Richard, of a haunting in Placerville, Calif., where he was called by the local sheriff to help eradicate the situation.

Fascinating or frightening, all of Richard’s photographs are distinctive. “I get more photos than anyone in the world. Nobody can do what I do,” he said.

Richard is planning his next project: working with archeologists at Mesa Verde to piece together ruins based on heat captured on infrared film. However, there are plenty of odd things happening around Durango, many right downtown.

Trick of the mind or paranormal activity? One Durango photographer says there's more than meets the eye when it comes to many old photos.

Fred Wildfang, local historian and co-owner of the Rochester Hotel, admits that unexplainable things occur in two of the rooms on the second floor of the hotel, and that guests and employees alike have been reporting strange experiences for years. “We have indications that the hotel is haunted,” Wildfang said. “It has been on national TV and the hotel is now on the register of the ‘100 Most Haunted Hotels in America.’” Reports of a woman in a long Victorian wedding dress or nightgown in and around Room 204, the famous John Wayne Room, have put the hotel on the map for ghost hunters and paranormal aficionados. Wildfang, who co-owns the hotel with his wife and her son, says people are very interested in the hotel’s unregistered guests. “We get calls every Halloween to rent out the room,” Wildfang said. “People come from all over the country

alike have been reporting strange experiences for years. “We have indications that the hotel is haunted,” Wildfang said. “It has been on national TV and the hotel is now on the register of the ‘100 Most Haunted Hotels in America.’” Reports of a woman in a long Victorian wedding dress or nightgown in and around Room 204, the famous John Wayne Room, have put the hotel on the map for ghost hunters and paranormal aficionados. Wildfang, who co-owns the hotel with his wife and her son, says people are very interested in the hotel’s unregistered guests. “We get calls every Halloween to rent out the room,” Wildfang said. “People come from all over the country.”

Other incidents include doors mysteriously locking from the inside, amenities getting rearranged and in one case, actor/jazz musician Bill Henderson changed his room after the Duke himself, John Wayne, allegedly began speaking to him directly from the television set.

Although the Rochester is now decked out in Western film décor, with movie posters, antiques and more lining the hallways, it wasn’t always so inviting. “The hotel has been open since the 1890s, and there were a lot of incidents during prohibition and so forth,” said Wildfang. “I did extensive interviews with the police and the fire department when we bought it in 1992, and there were a lot of stories of things that took place. Second Avenue wasn’t a street you would walk down at night. It was a rough end of town.”

But the Rochester isn’t the only hotel with skeletons in the closet. The General Palmer Hotel has a few of its own. Paula Nelson has been with the General Palmer for 16 years and though it has been a while, she has seen a few abnormal, disconcerting things. “We had a couple check out at 2 a.m. in the morning,” she said with grin. “They said they were awakened in the night and saw a woman hanging in the middle of the room.”

Another story she shared was first hand, and although it was from years earlier, her nervous smile let on that she still got the willies from telling it. “I was upstairs cleaning a room,” Nelson said, who worked her way up from house cleaning to general manager. “There were no guests, it was winter and pretty quiet, and I heard my name called. It was so clear that I walked out into the hall, but no one answered back. It was really clear,” she said. “There was no mistaking it.”

Inferno Snowboards, a hip snowboard/skateboard and apparel shop in the old Jarvis Suites building, also has some unwanted clients hanging around. The former hotel has long been thought to have a young boy on a tricycle pedaling around the third floor, his laughter echoing the hallways. A ghostly sailor has also been seen leaving the former hotel at night and walking the back steps to the street. Sam Krouse, a three-year employee of the shop, said she has witnessed something a little more disquieting. “We were just working, talking, and all of a sudden, the door knob to a closet just started shaking,” she said. The closet, which is barely big enough for a few people, is located in the front of the shop, behind the retail counter. “Then the door flew open,” Krouse said. “It didn’t just creep open, but flew open.”

Krouse also shared stories of unseen children’s laughter that left her and another employee rushing out of the building.

“Maybe that’s the sailor,” said Richard about the closet in the old Jarvis Suites. “Some people just don’t want to know.” He admits that people are often not interested in the paranormal. “People aren’t comfortable with it. It’s a different reality and they can’t accept it,” he said. “Some people open up to it really well, and it just shuts others down.”

Richard is content knowing that there are people who don’t support his work. He feels comfortable talking about these bizarre and eerie events, unlike others who warily share their secrets, eyes darting side to side. Richard certainly remains confident in his photographs. “I’ve been to court two times in New Hampshire over haunted houses, where the judges saw beyond a reasonable doubt and said, ‘OK, this house is haunted,’” Richard said.

So the next time you are walking home late at night, closing up shop in that century-old building or hearing things go bump in the night, take a second to stop, look and listen. While you’re at it, take a closer look at those old photographs.

“I’d say one in a hundred photos have something in them,” said Richard. “It’s amazing what’s out there. You just have to open your eyes.” •