Ghost Adventures: Bloodshed in the Bordello
The Wild West and the Gold Rush are often romanticized in movies. The cowboys wear white Stetsons or black. They strike gold or get the girl, riding off into the sunset as the credits roll.
In reality, the last half of the 1800s was a time of lawlessness, corruption, greed and lost morality in the American West. Women were forced into brothel work and murder was common, especially in bars. Welcome to Globe, Arizona, a mining camp established in 1875. At the town’s center is The Drift Inn Saloon, opened in 1902, and plagued ever since by death and the dead. This taproom and former brothel are home to spirits much stronger (and much scarier) than whiskey.
Related To:
Unsolved Murder
Zak Bagans and his team of paranormal thrill seekers head to Globe, Arizona, a town founded in the late 1800s by miners eager for mineral and gold wealth. Murder was common in Globe, as men shot and stabbed each other, fueled by jealousy, conspiracy and cheap whiskey. The Drift Inn Saloon opened in 1902, with a barroom below and a brothel upstairs. A series of documented, unsolved murders occurred here. It’s now one of the most haunted places in all of Arizona.
Welcome to the Darkside
Resident Megan Crawford leads Zak and the team upstairs, to the hallway they refer to as the darkside. It takes only minutes for Aaron to feel heat and pain in his neck. A red mark appears just below his hairline. It’s clear that this dark, wooden passage way is flanked by rooms that have experienced pure evil.
Bloody Brothel
Could the history and violence of Globe be a repetitive force here, with a nexus at The Drift Inn Saloon? The worst murder in the city’s history was in 1906, when Joe Ludwig was found in a room upstairs, with his throat cut and his heart removed. Richard Vecklund was poisoned in the same room only one year later. And, as Zak Bagans soon discovers, there was a mass shooting in 1944 in the bar and another in 2018, just outside of it.
Watch Your Back
With such brutal violence and multiple homicides occurring in one single building, Zak is on high alert. Sites with this much activity are potentially dangerous for the entire crew of Ghost Adventures. At one point, all three men complain of feeling as if the energy has been drained from their bodies. It’s merely the beginning of a long, terrifying night ahead.
Now I Lay Me Down To Die
Some of the rooms above the Drift Inn Saloon are rented, but many are empty––still bearing the original, antique furnishings. It’s tough to say which room is the original Room 18, where two men were murdered only a year apart. The numbers on the doors have been changed over the decades, but this bedroom is particularly charged with dark energy. Could this be the very bed where Joe Ludwig was discovered laying on a blood-soaked mattress?
A Christmas Massacre
The Drift Inn Saloon was the site of a gruesome homicide in 1944, when a man walked in and shot four people, killing two on Christmas Day. If it’s possible for bad energy to linger or be trapped in a place, this would certainly qualify as a prime location. Amy, a tour guide who takes visitors to Arizona’s most haunted places, admits she’s had uneasy, nervous feelings in the bar downstairs.
Time to Move Out
The crew reports smelling the strong scent of cigar smoke and of hearing disembodied screams. The hallways and rooms go ice-cold, and Zak gets a vision of a woman with a destroyed face. At one point, there is an EVP registering a single sentence: “Go upstairs and I can cut you.” The people living here are rightfully concerned and definitely in danger the longer they stay.