Just in time for Halloween, Apache Death Cave is full of history, creepy atmosphere
It is that time of year that brings communities together. To laugh, share, and just find the joy in being alive.
It is October — and that can only mean one thing — Halloween.
Ghosts, goblins, witches, and cryptids do their best to scare us to an unpleasant place.
It is the month to mutilate the pumpkin and paint the cat black.
One of my favorite seasons.
As Laureen and I were driving west along Route 66 after visiting Winslow, Arizona we decided to stop by a place that is so haunted, scary, and unnaturally spooky that most humans would not dare to tread there.
Unlike most humans, we knew it was an experience we just had to visit on our own.
Laureen is not that fancy on these spectral sorts of sites but since I was driving . . .
After pulling south off Route 66 by the ruins of the town of Two Guns, I was busy scanning my hand-held GPS looking for the scariest area near Two Guns.
“I don’t think this thing is working,” I told Laureen. “If I’m holding it correctly, we’re somewhere between Vienna and Salzburg.”
No reply from Laureen.
Suddenly I heard her from about 50 feet away. “It’s right here; I can feel it.”
The reason Laureen does not like to travel to many supposedly haunted places is that she actually "feels" something. A sense of foreboding of what may have occurred in the past at such a place.
Me, I usually feel hungry or thirsty.
As in earlier articles concerning "haunted places," I tend to be somewhat skeptical. I don’t think folks from the afterlife are waiting for me to invade their space.
“Hey, you are now in my personal ghost space. So rude of you that I will throw this antique rocking chair at your head.”
Of course, I do have to admit I have heard or seen things that I can not explain while traveling here and there.
I once saw a Boy Scout escort an older woman across the street in Houston, and I thought that only happened in Hallmark films.
“What is right here that you can feel it?” I asked Laureen, finally giving up on the hand-held GPS, which had me somewhere east of Moscow.
“The cave, it’s right here,” she replied.
The cave Laureen was mentioning was the famed Apache Death Cave, about 12 miles west of Meteor Crater in Arizona along Route 66.
The legend is terrifically sad.
In the late 19th Century, the two dominant native tribes residing in the area were the Apache and the Navajo. These two groups did not get along well and often raided and killed each other over territory or perhaps because they did not like each other.
But in 1878, it is rumored that some Apaches entered two Navajo camps and killed everyone except three young girls whom they kidnapped.
Other Navajo warriors hearing of this diabolical action, started to chase the Apache to seek their revenge and get the girls back.
The Navajo were closing the gap of the fleeing Apache but suddenly lost sight of them near the edge of the Canyon Diablo. This long arroyo meanders through the territory.
Getting off their horses, the Navajo looked high and low and low and high but could not locate the Apache.
Just then, as the story goes, one of the Navajo thought he heard voices from somewhere below him and found a deep cave carved into the Kaibab Limestone.
Sure enough, the Apache had ridden into the large cave with their horses and captives, hoping to trick the tracking Navajo.
The ruse did not work.
Grabbing a lot of sagebrush, the Navajo decided to smoke the Apache out of the cave by lighting the bushes on fire.
Moments later, a few Apache ran from the cave but were immediately killed by the waiting Navajo.
It only took a few minutes to realize the Apache had murdered the captives. Hence, the rest of the Navajo posse decided to finish the job and continued to throw large amounts of burning sagebrush into the mouth of the cave.
There was no chance for escape for any Apache trapped within the cave walls. 42 Apache succumbed to the smoke and fire.
I wandered over to Laureen standing by a small rock border, and she pointed downward. Sure enough, there was a cave that seemed like the walls may have been smoking damaged some time in the past.
“The hairs are standing up on the head,” she stated.
Looking at her perfectly quaffed hair, I did not know what to say. So, I said nothing.
An old wooden ladder type of bridge ran across the cave's width, allowing the visitor a chance to get closer to the shelter.
“You first,” I said.
“Me never,” Laureen replied.
After a few tense moments of rock scrambling and teetering on the wooden bridge, I found myself at the bottom of the cave.
It was dark inside the cave.
“Do you feel anything?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Wow, what?”
“I think I dislocated my right shoulder.”
The cave was longer than I had thought it would be. I wandered a bit, bumping into this wall or that wall, once nearly knocking off the top of my head on a low ceiling, and thought that if the ghosts of the murdered Apache were not going to talk to me, it was time to call this adventure off.
Besides, it did seem rather spooky in that dark hole in the ground alone.
“You want to come down and see?”
“Nope.”
After dusting myself off and making sure my forehead was not bleeding, I noticed that Laureen was not looking quite herself.
She told me that there was something in the immediate surroundings she could sense. A sense of doom, of tragedy, of absolute horror.
“They were afraid to die in such a way.”
I do not question her feelings. I may do it inwardly but not outwardly.
But there was something different in that cave – I am not saying I felt what Laureen did, but it was rather oppressive in the cave. Almost suffocating, but that could be the close quarters and wandering around in a dark place by yourself.
New Reality paranormal investigators, Shawn and Cody, had previously visited the Apache Death Cave and recorded their investigation for their hit series.
They felt and heard things while pulling their stint within that cave.
We spent time with them when they investigated a haunted ranch house in Lucerne. We all heard and experienced things that long haunting night.
These guys are experts in this paranormal field.
But I am still a skeptic. I am waiting for Casper to sit on the sofa and explain clearly why he is a ghost and why I need to believe him.
In 1881, a bridge was built across Canyon Diablo by the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, and a small tent city named Canyon Diablo was constructed for the workers.
But that little tent city grew up to be a rootin’-tootin’ full-time town, which made Tombstone look like a children’s nursery school.
The population boomed to 2,000 folks overnight, and there was at least one killing in the streets near the dozen saloons, gambling halls, and brothels daily.
The first Marshall hired to protect the town was shot dead three hours later. It was a lawless town.
Boot Hill became so complete that the undertaker ran out of room for any new customers.
According to the Republic Newspaper out of Arizona, one problem with this tale is that this town probably never existed.
In an article written by Scott Craven, the town had been created by a fictional writer by the name of Gladwell Richardson, who passed away in 1980 and had written nearly 300 western novels under various pseudonyms.
When the bridge was completed, the tent city moved on.
Richardson also first wrote about the Apache Death Cave in his only non-fiction book about the town of Two Guns, Arizona. Before he wrote about it in his book, the tragic event had never been seen in print.
It seems that both a town so wild Doc Holiday would have circumvented it and a horrific story such as the Apache Death Cave had occurred, there should be more mention of it in the history books.
But, as with many historical records, things may get a bit exaggerated by those writing those histories.
Those silly writers. Who do they think they are embellishing here and there?
We walked around studying the layout, checking this out, and checking that out, and Laureen said she could still feel that something tragic had occurred here in the past.
Perhaps something had happened to the Apache and Navajo in the 19th century, and perhaps not.
A town may have been here that was totally lawless but perhaps not.
That is the way with myths and legends, they grow stronger as the decades slip by.
Are they true, or does it matter?
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Apache Death Cave is full of history creepy atmosphere
