Post by Joanna on Sept 18, 2014 18:47:29 GMT -5
The missing and the haunted: ghost bars of Taos
TAOS, N.M. – A building can be haunted but can a building haunt a person? Sometime in the early 1990s there was a bar in Taos that served pretty much anyone of any age without any questions. The bar was in a basement with one window at ground level that looked out, through metal bars, onto a road. It was a dark place full of old men and a musty smell. I never got a welcoming smile but they served my friends and my eighteen-year-old self without ever asking our ages.
After a 10-year hiatus from Taos, however, I could never find that bar again. I’ve asked numerous people and no one knows of the place. I’ve walked around town looking for it. I’ve searched for it in Ranchos and Seco, never with any luck. I’m not crazy. I went there many times.
Can a bar itself become a ghost? In Taos it seems possible. The ghosts of many a bar continue to haunt this town. The ghosts of many bar patrons likewise hang around the bars we frequent.
“A basement bar doesn’t ring a bell. But where the Byzantium Restaurant sits now there used to be a watering hole called La Loma Bar,” Taos historian Larry Torres told me when I called to ask about my ghost bar. “Somewhere in the past, two drunken lovers quarreled and the man stabbed the woman there,” he said. “She stumbled out and down along the street towards Ledoux leaving bloody hand prints along the walls and wailing all the way. “They call her La Llorona of Ledoux,” said Torres. “Some say the bloody hand print reappears briefly along those walls on the Day of the Dead.” Now that’s a ghost bar. But that wasn’t my bar.
Near where Michael’s Kitchen presently sits, there was long ago a bar infamous for selling liquor to men from Taos Pueblo. According to Torres it was really the only establishment that welcomed the original Taoseños. “There are stories of men coming in wrapped in their blankets and with their hair in ribbons. So I imagine it was quite a sight, especially for visitors. But the ghosts came when the bar closed and for years drumming was heard coming from the building.” Unfortunately, he didn’t know of any specific reason it might be haunted.
Could it have been El Gaucho Bar? That one sat about where the parking lot for Cabot’s Plaza and that of Eske’s Brew Pub and Eatery meet. Or wait. Was it El Gaucho? Yes. But it was also the Miramon at one time and then El Tío Vivo and then The Long Horn Bar and then The White Bar. According to Torres, it wasn’t El Gaucho Bar until about 1961. Owned by the Archuleta brothers, the bar wasn’t known for any particular violent occurrence. But after it closed around 1970, people in the area began reporting female laughter and the scent of perfume in the air. Torres has never been able to find pictures of the bar.
There must be a story we don’t know yet. In the March 14, 2007, issue of the now defunct Taos Horsefly, in the Truth and Beauty column by Dory Hulburt, there is a reference to a Grace Graham King who came to Taos to study art with Walter Ufer. Apparently, on her first night in town, she was sucking on a cigarette outside the Don Fernando Hotel when a man lurched to the ground in front of her, his guts spilling out near her feet. Evidently he’d been cut at El Gaucho. Given that Doc Martin was the one who stitched the man, the knifing had to have taken place sometime before 1930, meaning there was another El Gaucho that pre-dates the one Torres mentioned.
Another ghost bar is the Columbian, formerly situated on the south side of the plaza. In 1880, Aloysius Liebert built the bar and added on a large lobby space that doubled as a dance hall. Twenty years later, Robert Pooler purchased the hotel and bar and ran it until a drunk customer shot him to death in 1909. “Pooler’s ghost seems to be angry,” says local ghost aficionado Melody Elwell-Romancito. “I guess you can’t blame him. I’d be mad too if I got shot.”
According to Torres, the actual oldest bar in Taos is the Alley Cantina. Several decades ago it was known as El Patio. Portions of the building might date back 400 years. Buildings that old are bound to be haunted. Sure enough “the kitchen area, which is the oldest might be haunted by Teresina, the daughter of Governor Bent,” says Torres.
Former owner Ruth Waterhouse told me that during renovations 20-plus years ago, some very strange things went on. “When we started knocking holes in the walls things would mysteriously be moved. There were some brand new candle holders that seemed to light themselves. Later, we also had a number of female customers tell us they felt someone touch them when they were waiting for the restroom – and no one else was around.”
The history of Taos is chock-full of bars that came and went. The bar I’m looking for seems to have vanished. The fact no one seems to know anything about that basement cantina gives me the shivers. But not as much as being touched by a ghost would.
Source: Jim O'Donnell, The Taos News, September 18, 2104.