Ghosts of Taos are mischievous and warped
This time of year the veil between the living and the dead gets thinner
During this time of year, as the veil between the living and the dead tends to get thinner and thinner, the people of Taos like to recall ghost stories from a time before anyone here had electricity.
Ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties seemed to abound in every dark corner as we all huddled around the feeble light of the kerosene lamp.
One such memory is called “Midnight Encounter with the Devil.” It recalls Old Man Pando who used to come to town every evening to buy a swig or two of illegal White Lightning. On that particular autumn night as he was zigzagging back home after a good time, suddenly he stopped in the middle of the dirt road. Before him, bigger than life, was the very devil himself.
At first he couldn’t believe his eyes on that cloudy night; it could have been the effect of the booze on his brain. But no – there he was, with big, reddish eyes staring down at him, two pointy horns sticking out from his head and his tail swinging between his legs as if to impede his pass.
The devil grunted at Old Man Pando as he staked out his territory. Pando went down on his knees praying to St. Michael the Archangel to deliver him from the everlasting pangs of hell. He began to bargain with the devil, promising to repent, to give up booze and to become a better person. The devil said nothing; he just stared at him.
As he knelt there in the mud on that gloomy night with the devil towering over him, Old Man Pando suddenly recalled the Rite of Exorcism that the priest would say against evil when he had been an innocent altar boy: “Liberame Domine de morte aeterna in dies ille tremenda cuando coeli movendi sunt et terra [Deliver me, O Lord, from everlasting death on that fateful day when the heavens and the earth will be moved].”
The devil only stuck out his tongue and licked Old Man Pando’s forehead as if to taste his soul.
Cringing from the touch from the devil’s tongue, Pando made the sign of the cross by transfixing his thumb with his index finger. The devil came closer as Pando sank hopelessly into despair. Just as he was ready to give up the spirit, the moon came out from behind the clouds and that’s when Pando realized the he had been praying and bargaining with his pet bull that had gotten loose from the corral.
Our next story of the warped ghosts of Taos is called “They’re Coming to Get You.” It is the tale of a very happy local dude named Tito. After many years of waiting, he had managed to save up enough money to buy himself an old, two-story, fixer-upper of a house. Granted, he would have to work really hard to bring it up to code. He started by sweeping off the cobwebs because they kind of gave the house an uncomfortable, haunted look.
As he was nailing down the rickety, old staircase, he noticed that there were several mouse droppings all over so he set some traps to catch them. On the first night that he was to sleep in the old house, one of his new neighbors called over to him: “Careful Tito! The ghosts are coming to get you!”
Tito waved the remark off with frown and the back of his hand as he went upstairs where he thought he might put his bedroom. He put on an old pair of sweats to wear as pajamas in case he got cold in the night. Just before he lay down to sleep, the hair on the back of his neck suddenly stood up. He thought he heard a noise and he remembered the neighbor’s warning: “The ghosts are coming for you!” He was too mature to be put off by the remarks by a silly neighbor. He just turned over and prepared for a good night’s rest.
At about midnight he heard some footsteps over at the staircase and immediately his mind went straight back to the neighbor’s warning: “The ghosts are coming to get you!” Although he tried not to think about it, he could distinctly hear the sound of a footstep and then a dragging noise. It was like the sound of a lame man taking a step and then dragging his leg. “Step-whoosh! Step-whoosh! Step-whoosh!” Those warped Taos ghosts were coming for him.
He began to shiver in bed but he was not sure whether it was from the cold or the feeling that the ghosts were coming to get him. Suddenly he remembered that he had a flashlight under his pillow. He grabbed it and focused its light on the staircase. From where he was at the top he couldn’t see anyone but he could still hear the step-whoosh, step-whoosh, stepwhoosh on the stairs. He began to pray quietly just in case the Taos ghosts were to get him before dawn. He hunkered down covering his face under the blanket.
Somehow he survived the night but in the morning when he went to investigate he found that a mouse had gotten trapped by its tail and it had been dragging the trap down the stairs, one step at a time. “Step-whoosh! Step-whoosh! Step-whoosh!” Mystery solved.
Yes, there are strange things that do happen along the both in and outdoors in this area. Anyone walking next to the side of the road late at night has often reported stories of the spirits of dead people known as “the unfleshed ones” that they’ve encountered. They are the ghosts of people who have lost their lives in places marked by resting place crosses. These spooks tend to creep out late-night passersby.
In this tale, called “The Haunted Car,” young Pepo was trying to walk from Talpa to Peñasco. As he stood there thumbing for a ride, many cars zoomed past him without so much as a pause. Finally one did stop and he opened the door to get inside. The car went forward slowly and Pepo turned to thank the driver for picking him up.
That’s when he saw that there was no one sitting in the driver’s seat. Pepo saw that the car was coming slowly to a bend on the highway and he was a little fearful that it might end up in a gully, but then an unseen hand came in through the window, turned the steering wheel to the right, and then it disappeared back out the window. Pepo got goose bumps because there was still no driver there, but the car kept going forward as if by itself.
Now Pepo saw that the car was coming to another turn on the road and the same ghostly hand had yet to make itself known. At the last moment, the unseen hand came into the car window and turned the steering wheel in the opposite direction. Pepo was saved just in the nick of time.
Swiftly the pale hand glided out the window again. Pepo was freaked out by this unearthly appearance again. What could he do? He decided to jump out of the car the moment it came to a stop. He hadn’t been able to see anyone in the rearview mirror either as the car plodded forward. When the car finally halted, Pepo seized the moment to leap from the car and he ran until he reached a cantina that was open.
He rushed breathlessly into the bar yelling: “A drink! A drink! I need a drink! I just escaped from a moving car that was being driven by one of those unfleshed ghosts. I almost peed my pants, I was so scared!”
He had barely sat on a stool to gulp down his brewski when two local dudes sauntered into the tavern. One of the guys looked at Pepo and then he nudged the other one and asked him, “Hey Chuy, isn’t that guy who is nursing his drink over there that same stupid jackass who jumped into the broken-down car you and me was pushing down the road, bro?”
Some ghosts are real and they call for respect from us. Mercifully Taos ghosts tend more toward the mischievous and the warped and they are often just a big part of our daily lives.