Some say the dead don't sleep well in the sleepy village of Cuchillo, New Mexico. And because of that, the living don't sleep well either.

You can buy a "confirmed" haunted house in Cuchillo. It is roughly 2,000 square feet, was built sometime around 1890, and served as a home for several generations of Hispanic families. The West Coast Ghost and Paranormal Society (WCGAPS), which sets out to debunk stories of hauntings, visited the joint in May. The investigation revealed disembodied voices, the smell of rose perfume, and the presence of a shadowy figure — in short, a confirmation of paranormal phenomena.

The house's owner is artist Josh Bond, a New Mexico native in his mid-30s who bought two properties in Cuchillo a few years ago. Both of the houses are reportedly haunted by restless spirits from the past, spooks who may have once plied their trade as gamblers, prostitutes, farmers, retailers, bartenders, or travelers.

Cuchillo, located about 12 miles northwest of Truth or Consequences, was founded by Hispanic and Anglo settlers sometime in the early- to-mid-1800s. It was once a thriving farming community and a regular stagecoach stop. Located just down the road from a couple of mining communities (Chloride and Winston), Cuchillo — which takes its name from the Apache chief Cuchillo Negro (Black Knife) — once had a working post office, a general store, a church, and a hotel/bar. A massive flood in the early 1900s wiped out much of the town, and after World War II its population decreased until, today, it has about 35 residents.

Bond lives in a house attached to an old hotel and bar, which was partially demolished in a fire a few years ago. He's not a believer — at least, he appears to be trying to convince himself that he's not a believer — but he can't help but wonder whether someone (or something) else resides there with him. The confirmed haunted house is about 50 yards away; Bond lived there for a while too.

"I'm not afraid," he said when Pasatiempo (in the form of yours truly and photographer Luis Sánchez-Saturno) paid him an overnight visit to launch our own investigation last week. "But I'm also very cynical.I'm looking for explanations that are of this world."
He pointed to the house, which is for sale on Ebay. "It's not a scary haunted house. It just happens to be a house that sells with a lot of inhabitants still inside it." (To make a bid, search Ebay for "haunted adobe.")

Bond found a lot of abandoned items on the property, including saddles, pistols, coffee cans, bottled jam (well past its expiration date), soda and liquor bottles, advertising signs (one features the Philip Morris bellboy), and legal, financial, and real-estate documents dating back to the late 1800s. He also uncovered a stash of black-and-white photos, most of which feature unidentified people from 100-plus years ago.

So did Bond, in taking over the property and displaying items from bygone eras, somehow rouse the ghosts of Cuchillo's early days? He's beginning to see, hear, and sense more unsettling things: a female voice whispering something in his ear; unseen entities bumping against him and muttering phrases in Spanish; the shadow of a cowboy in the bar area; and unexplained noises in the night.

He's drawn attention to the town and his situation through the Ebay auction and the various paranormal investigators who have arrived to see what all the fuss is about. His goal, he said, is to preserve the damaged hotel, store, and bar and to fix up the decrepit corral behind. He wants to open a museum that will pay tribute to the history of Cuchillo. To do that, he needs money. And what better way to raise cash than to advertise a genuine haunted house for sale?

Medium Jan Born of Truth or Consequences thinks Bond is onto something. She gave Bond an unexpected reading moments after Pasatiempo arrived on the scene. She detected images of eight different spirits, seven of whom are pretty lively and friendly, one of whom isn't so bad but tends to nag a lot. That one, Born said, was probably Bond's wife in a former life. Bond was a pioneer in Cuchillo's early days, she said. "There's a long list of things that you owe," Born told Bond. "This is like a divorce settlement 150 years later."

Besides Bond's ghostly former wife, Born sensed the spirits of three men and three women in the courtyard area of the house that Bond lives in — not in the confirmed haunted house, mind you. One of the men was an Easterner who came West, started a business, and made a lot of money. The other two were Hispanic immigrants, perhaps a father-son team, who worked for the Easterner. One woman was the wife of the elder Hispanic man — and she was having an affair with the Easterner. The other two women, possibly sisters, were probably prostitutes — and fun-loving ones at that, Bond said — in the Easterner's pay.

The eighth ghost is that of a gambler shot and killed in the bar. He's not too unhappy about it, Born said. "His name is Jake or Jack. He was shot from three different angles. He was so surprised and it happened so fast that he just sat down and started playing again." All these ghosts, Born said, are having trouble graduating from the place. But they appreciate Bond and what he's trying to do. Oddly enough, in the confirmed haunted house, Born picked up very little, other than a reserved, Spanish-flavored energy that was hard to define.

Bond didn't say much about Born's findings. Yet after Born left, Bond showed Pasatiempo a black-and-white photo taken in Cuchillo in the 1800s of a man in an Eastern-looking suit and bowler hat standing next to two Hispanic workmen — probably two brothers, not father and son. "I thought of this photo immediately when she said that," he noted of Born's comments on the Easterner and his two Hispanic employees. Bond also unearthed another photo from the same period of two women who look like sisters — though their dour facial expressions and conservative church-style dress suggest that they were part of the women's temperance movement and not in the brothel business.

Bond hopes he gets the right offer for the Ebay house by the end date — Saturday, Oct. 31, which is Halloween. But regardless of what happens with the house, he'll stay in Cuchillo. "I'm obsessed with preserving the history of this small town," he said. "I feel like this is where I'm going to die."

This article appears in the Oct. 30, 2009 issue of Pasatiempo.